Boss Tim Sherwood backed Christian Benteke to fire Aston Villa to safety after the striker's crucial hat trick saved a point against QPR.
The forward's treble -- his first in two years -- clinched a pulsating 3-3 draw with their drop rivals as Villa edged further clear of the bottom three.
Villa are three points above the Premier League drop zone and denied QPR the chance to leapfrog them in the table.
Defeat would have left Villa in the relegation zone and behind QPR but Benteke struck a 25-yard free-kick with seven minutes left to save them and complete his treble.
The Belgium international has seven goals in seven games under Sherwood and the boss hopes he can maintain his form to keep Villa up.
He said: "That's the plan. It doesn't come much better than that. He's a good player, I have always said it and he's in a rich vein of form.
"It's fantastic for him to score the goals, it's just a shame we couldn't get the three points. It's not about what you deserve, it's about what you get and we got one point.
"This could be a vital point come the end of the season in the end, when you go so late into the game and Christian has had to pull that out the bag we're grateful."
But Sherwood insisted Villa should have won after Benteke's first-half double, cancelling out Matt Phillips' opener, gave them a 2-1 lead at the break.
He said: "It's disappointing when you dominate a football match like that, the ref should have stopped it at half-time.
"I thought we tired in the second half but that's to be expected and two of those back four have trained about four times in eight weeks. We dropped off a little bit too deep and couldn't keep that pressure on them.
"But anyone who has seen that football match knows it shouldn't have been close."