Fulham can close the gap on eighth-placed Birmingham to two points with a victory against Tony Pulis' Stoke side, who are without a league win in six.
Stoke arguably represent an easier challenge than the three teams Fulham played over the festive period - Tottenham, Chelsea and last year's champions Manchester United, who they beat 3-0.
That does not mean that Roy Hodgson will be taking the Potters lightly, however.
"There's some really important Premier League points at stake for both teams," he said.
"Stoke have been very good at home recently, they have had one or two blips but they are a tough team to beat in the Britannia Stadium.
"They have a style of football which is well ingrained in them, well coached and we'll have to defend at least as well as we did against Swindon, if not better, to keep them out."
Hodgson will welcome back Damien Duff, Danny Murphy and Chris Baird, who were all rested at the weekend.
Paul Konchesky (back) should play after coming through Saturday's game and Chris Smalling will continue to deputise for Brede Hangeland if the Norway defender fails to recover from a knee injury.
Stephen Kelly is likely to keep his place in the absence of John Paintsil, who could be out for the rest of the season with a knee injury he picked up against Chelsea.
Hodgson is not holding out hope of a quick return for the right-back, who met with the club's medical staff at the weekend to assess the full extent of his injury.
"We know from the scan that John has damaged his posterior cruciate ligament so he has a serious injury," said Hodgson.
"There's no hope for me that the medical staff are going to phone me and say it's not as bad as we thought it would be, it's only going to be a couple of weeks.
"What they are talking about is the difference between 10 and maybe 18 weeks so we will have to do without Paintsil for a long time."