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Cork knows if Clarets go down, it’s their own fault

As much as Burnley would welcome a helping hand in their survival fight, Jack Cork claims they cannot rely on favours.

He admits it is hard not to follow Leeds and Everton’s games in the hope they will stumble in their battle with Burnley to avoid filling the last relegation place.

But he knows the Clarets cannot bank on help from other teams in their desperate bid to beat the drop.

Cork says they must save themselves and that it will be their fault if they go down.

“It’s tough not to watch their games and keep and eye on them, but if we don’t get the points, we go down, it’s as simple as that,” he said.

“It’s tough because you find yourself thinking, ‘If they drop points here’, but if we don’t win our games, it’ll be our fault.

“It’s ultimately down to us

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whether we stay up or go down and we’ve got to get the points.”

Aston Villa burst Burnley’s bubble as they suffered their first loss under interim manager Michael Jackson in his fifth game.

The manner of this defeat was as disappointing as the result, and Burnley defended badly for all three goals.

Lynchpin

They also failed to create enough decent chances and after the high of their threegame winning streak, they were brought crashing back down to earth.

To make matters worse, defensive lynchpin James Tarkowski came off with a hamstring issue to add to their already-long injured list.

Cork refused to be downbeat and insisted Burnley are still in a good position.

“It was just the two early goals,”said the midfielder.“They got two early goals. Second half, we went 3-0 down and there wasn’t much we could do.

“We’re in a great position compared to where we were a few weeks ago. If we hadn’t got those wins, we’d be miles off it, we would have been so far off it.

“We’ve got games to play, and, yeah, we’re optimistic. We don’t want to waste that bit of momentum we had and take it into the next games.”

Burnley’s next game at Tottenham on Sunday was already tough, but without, potentially, Tarkowski and skipper Ben Mee at the heart of their defence, it looks even more daunting.

Ruthless

Villa were ruthless and raced into a 2-0 lead inside 31 minutes through former Clarets striker Danny Ings and Emiliano Buendia.

Ollie Watkins headed home the third seven minutes into the second half in front of Gareth Southgate to make it game over, while Maxwel