Kieran Richardson praised Fulham’s travelling supporters for the incredible atmosphere they created during Saturday’s win at Aston Villa – and called on the fans to roar their team on to another vital victory this weekend.

The versatile left-sided player admitted he was inspired by the raucous reception the Fulham players received from the 3,000-strong Fulham support as they came out to warm up at Villa Park and feels that similar backing from the Craven Cottage faithful could be crucial in the coming weeks.

When we came out for the warm-up, I got shivers from the way they were shouting. They were massive for us and that support right there is the support we need for the run-in. It’s unbelievable to play in front of that and hopefully they’ll be the same against Norwich.

Richardson, a veteran of a successful battle against the drop with West Bromwich Albion back in 2005, opened the scoring with a stunning second-half strike and was in doubt as to the significance of Fulham’s late victory at Villa Park.

It was a massive win at Villa. All week we’d been building up to it in training. The magnitude of the game had been drummed into us and we knew we had to go to Villa and win, and we did. Hopefully we can move on this week against Norwich at home.

A win over the Canaries, who responded to their own perilous position in the league table by sacking manager Chris Hughton on Sunday night, would take Fulham to within two points of safety with four games to play.

We’re very confident we can beat Norwich. We’re always confident at home, we have great support. Our last four games, we’ve picked up two wins. We lost against Everton in our previous home match but we played some good football. We’re in form and hopefully we can beat Norwich. It will be a hard, hard game, there’s no denying that – they’re fighting [to stay] in the Barclays Premier League as well. But if we beat them we’ll be two points behind them.

West Brom was a bit different – we weren’t expected to come out of there at all. With Fulham, the players we have, I’m always confident we can get a result. The Manager is top class; from the get go he’s come in and done a good job. I’m not worried. I do believe we’ll get out of it because we have the quality.

I’m ready if it goes that far to the last day. It doesn’t matter if it’s the last day, last minute or last second, as long as we stay up.