JOSÉ MOURINHO, THE CHELSEA manager, may be out of favour with the football authorities both at home and abroad, but he can be satisfied that he has the respect of his peers. Most of his fellow managers usually seem to find something positive to say about him, and Harry Redknapp was no exception on Saturday evening, even after Mourinho’s Chelsea had made life more uncomfortable for his Southampton side with a 3-1 victory. “I saw him before the game and I like him very much,” Redknapp said. “He’s a good guy. He’s got something about him. He said: ‘I hope you win your championship and I hope we win ours’.”

Unfortunately, that snappy line, delivered second-hand, was all that the assembled media got of Mourinho himself. Blaming “spam e-mail that was clearly an April Fool’s joke”, Chelsea played down rumours that their manager was considering resignation after the charges that have been laid against him by Uefa and the FA. However, they could not persuade him to break a self-imposed blackout — visits to the Middle East excepted — that could keep him out of press conferences until the European Cup semi-finals, assuming Chelsea overcome Bayern Munich to get there.

Redknapp thinks they will. “They’ve got a big chance, a great chance,” he said. “It’s going to be difficult to beat them. Having said that, it won’t be a walkover because Bayern Munich were terrific against Arsenal at Highbury, very solid. So it will be a tough game.”

All the tougher with Mourinho banned from the touchline for the two matches — pending a possible appeal — and not permitted to communicate with the bench. “I think the ban he’s got is a bit harsh,” Redknapp said. “I would think the players know him well enough to know what he wants and for him to get his message through somehow but I still think they like to see him there. They feel more confident if he’s there because they know he can put things right that are going wrong.

“No disrespect, but they haven’t got anybody else who is very vocal. He’s a bit of a one-man band, isn’t he? He’s the front guy, the main man. If he’s not there, I’m sure they will miss him. But I don’t think that could cost them against Bayern. It will be a tight one, but I still think they’re good enough to go through and I’d love to see them win it. I’d love to see an English team win it and they’ve got a few English players in their team, which is nice as well.”

At St Mary’s, Chelsea appeared to be saving themselves for Wednesday’s match at home to the German champions. They played well within themselves, confident that their abilities would contrive openings, although their first goal, after 22 minutes, owed rather more to fortune. Mark Halsey, the referee, misinterpreted Mateja Kezman’s fall to earth as a foul by Andreas Jakobsson, and Frank Lampard’s subsequent free kick was deflected past Antti Niemi by Rory Delap on the end of the defensive wall.

Their second, however, saw Glen Johnson slalom past four defenders before pulling the ball back for Eidur Gudjohnsen to double the lead. The Iceland forward continues to revel in the deeper role that he has occupied recently and added the third seven minutes from time with an angled shot after a slick move.

That put paid to the comeback that Southampton had threatened after 69 minutes when they caught Chelsea’s defenders out with a short corner, Kevin Phillips converting Paul Telfer’s low cross. The home crowd had expected more from their side, especially with Peter Crouch in good form, but Redknapp credited Mourinho for an astute tactical decision. “I thought the manager made a good move in playing (Robert) Huth against Crouch. (Ricardo) Carvalho is a fantastic player but he’s only 6ft and I was looking for Crouch to pull on to him all day. We spoke about that before the game but then he brought in Huth, who is 6ft 4in.”

It all added up to a widening of the gap between Chelsea and the rest at the top of the table to 13 points, which means that three wins from their remaining seven matches will bring them the title. Defeat for Crystal Palace softened the blow of Southampton’s third home league defeat of the season and Redknapp remains confident in his team’s ability to escape relegation. “It’s still in our hands and I think we’ll be OK,” he said. “I like the look of the team. We’re capable of winning some games, we’ve been in good form and that was our first defeat in quite a while. And Chelsea are top-class. They’re a proper team and they’re going to be champions.”