Ex-Saints boss Harry Redknapp admits avoiding relegation from the Barclays Premier League with QPR this season would be an even bigger achievement than when he saved Portsmouth from the drop seven years ago.

Redknapp was nicknamed ‘Harry Houdini’ as Portsmouth recovered from being eight points adrift of safety at the end of February to stay up on the final day of the 2005-2006 campaign.

Now QPR are seven points short of safety after yesterday’s 3-2 reversal at Aston Villa, a result inflicted courtesy of Christian Benteke’s late winner.

But Redknapp sees signs of encouragement that give him hope QPR can still drag themselves clear of danger in the remaining eight matches.

He said: “This is probably tougher than when we stayed up at Portsmouth, considering the position I started from here.

“It is going to be hard, it is going to be tough. It was always going to be hard wasn’t it? But it’s not impossible.

“We are playing well at the moment, that is the encouraging thing for me. I think we have got to carry on playing as we are at the moment and just cut out the mistakes.

“Let’s be honest, before we played Southampton and Villa away and Sunderland at home, if someone had offered me five points I would have taken them - and we ended up with six.”

Redknapp added: “We are starting to score some goals which is something we hadn’t done earlier in the year.

“Our top goalscorer has got four goals. That tells you what has been the problem all year.

“We look like we can score suddenly, but we have got to go and win away from home somewhere in these coming games.

“We have got to win at Fulham, we have got to win at Reading. We have got to win one of those games and we have got to win our home games. If we can do that, we can still stay up.”

Villa manager Paul Lambert can see green shoots of recovery of his own as his side moved six points clear of the bottom three after achieving back-to-back wins for the first time in 22 months.

He opted to rebuild Norwich by putting the accent on young players and is attempting to repeat the formula at Villa.

Lambert said: “I had a brilliant time at Norwich. You are trying to do the same sort of thing here.

“The only difference is at Norwich we were in League One. Here you are in the Premier League and you are trying to build something plus get results at the same time.

“You had a bit of time at Norwich to try to do it but this is a whole different ball game to my last position. It’s tougher.”

Striker Andreas Weimann again proved his worth to Villa in scoring the home side’s second goal and setting up Benteke’s winner.

Captain Ron Vlaar hopes the Austria international will put pen to paper on the new contract he has been offered.

Vlaar said: “Andi was very good and very inspirational. He keeps on going. If you see his work-rate, his statistics, it’s unbelievable. He’s doing it every game for us.

“I don’t know much about it (his contract) but I think they are still talking to each other. It’s very important he stays for Aston Villa.

“He has really announced himself as a player. He scores a lot of goals and has the knack of being in the right place at the right time to score them. He’s very important for us.”

Villa striker Gabriel Agbonlahor cancelled out an opener from Jermaine Jenas. Weimann then put the home side in front and Andros Townsend levelled for QPR before Benteke struck his 17th goal of the season.