Brad Guzan believes Sunday's goalless draw with Manchester City can act as a springboard for Aston Villa in their fight to stay in the Premier League.
The stalemate at Villa Park was Remi Garde's first match in the dugout after replacing Tim Sherwood and ended a run of seven successive defeats in the league.
Villa remain rooted to the foot of the table, but Guzan is confident taking a point off a side battling for the title can lift morale around the club as they look to stay in the top flight.
"It's given us much hope that we can get results and that we can avoid the drop," the goalkeeper told Villa's official website.
"When you're down at the bottom of the table you need a bit of luck, you need things to go your way and hopefully this is the turning point for us.
"It was huge to stop the run of defeats.
"Going forward we know it's going to be a tough task – we're still in the bottom three. We still need to fight and improve on our performances, but this is a small step in the right direction.
"That's what we needed – we needed to stop the string of losing results and now can build on this and give ourselves a platform to move forward."
