Cork '“ Clarets are victims of their own success

With yet another of his former clubs up next in the Premier League, with Southampton visiting Turf Moor, the England international gauged the season so far with a little bit of realism.

All the talk surrounds the club’s 10-game stretch without a win in the top flight but Sean Dyche’s side remain seventh in the table with 12 games remaining.

Burnley had settled in to the Champions League places for a spell, holding fourth spot before Christmas having accrued 31 points from 17 outings.

However, having already lost skipper Tom Heaton through a shoulder injury as well as Robbie Brady, boss Sean Dyche was then forced to juggle his squad with Stephen Ward, Ben Mee, Matt Lowton, James Tarkowski, Jonathan Walters, record signing Chris Wood, Steven Defour and now Phil Bardsley all having spells on the sidelines.

Cork confessed that he never expected that early season form to continue throughout but the former Chelsea academy player still considers the campaign to have been a great success so far as he targets a top half finish.

“We knew a bad run would come at some stage,” he said. “We weren’t naive enough to think that we’d go on forever. We don’t want to waste how well we did in the first half of the season though.

“We don’t want to let the season peter out, we want to kick on again and see how high we can go.

“The top half would be amazing. It would be great and would show how much progress we’ve made. That would be a good target for us.

“We’re still in seventh, we’ve got to be realistic, we’re having a great season. “We did really well in the first half of the season.

“Realistically we knew that a bad run would come at some stage. It’s all about how we get out of it now and how we go back to how we were at the start of the season.”

With the Saints struggling on the road, coming out on top on just two occasions this term, Cork is looking to capitalise on the opposition’s travel sickness.

The 28-year-old, who spent three-and-a-half years at St Mary’s, winning the Championship with them in 2012, said: “We know at home that we’re capable of getting a result against anyone so we’re looking forward to them coming and having a good game.

“We know how well we can do at home, especially with the fans behind us. We’re due a win and we’re due a couple of goals.

“They’ve been on a bad run but they had a good win the other week against West Brom. It will be a good game at home.

“I’ve played two [former clubs] in a row. It’ll be nice to see some old faces and hopefully we can get a better result than against Swansea.”