Cork excited by prospect of European football
In December, Cork spoke of the hope of reaching 30 points by the turn of the year.
And, having comfortably met that target, the Clarets have since gone on to emulated last term’s 40-point total with nine games remaining.
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Hide AdHaving reached that pivotal milestone – often perceived to be the figure which all but guarantees Premier League safety – they can now look beyond that.
Plenty of talk surrounds the club’s potential to mount a push for the Europa League, with seventh spot likely to be enough to seal that berth, providing a club which finishes in the top five wins the Emirates FA Cup – with Manchester United, Spurs and Chelsea still in the competition.
Indeed, Burnley are only five points behind Arsenal in sixth place.
And Cork is excited by that prospect, having yet to experience club continental football in his career to date.
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Hide Ad“The 40-point mark was always the main aim,” said the 28-year-old, who still hasn’t missed a minute of top flight action this season.
“We’ve hit the mark with nine games to go, and now we can just enjoy it and try to play good football and get as many points as we can.
“With nine games remaining we’ll try and hit 50 points now if we can.
“That’s another new target for us.”
He added: “We’ve managed to stay in seventh place without winning games.
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Hide Ad“We’ve had a few draws but somehow we’ve managed to stay in seventh place without getting the results.
“Now we’ll try and kick on and if we can open up a bigger gap, it would be great.
“We’d love to finish the season well and keep going.
“We worked hard for the first half of the year and it would be great if we can have a good season that we’ve all enjoyed and we can look back on fondly.
“It looks like it’s going to be seventh (for Europe) this season if the cups go that way. We’ll have to see. Obviously I’ve never played in the Europa League so it would be a great experience if we did manage to do that.”