BURNLEY midfielder Jack Cork believes the Clarets can approach a trio of key festive fixtures in confident mood despite the 3-1 defeat at Arsenal on Saturday.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang scored twice for the Gunners before Ashley Barnes halved the deficit and sparked hopes of a Clarets comeback.

But, with Burnley pushing for an equaliser, sub Alex Iwobi scored a stoppage time third for the home side on the counter to seal the points for Unai Emery’s side.

The loss means the Clarets will spend Christmas in the bottom three but Cork saw plenty of reasons to be positive having now competed well with Arsenal, Tottenham and Liverpool this month albeit with no points to show for their efforts from those contests.

“In the last four games, three of them have been Liverpool, Tottenham and Arsenal and all three of them we have come close to getting something,” said Cork.

“It has been frustrating because in all three we felt like we put in some half decent performances and today we felt like we had the better of it in the second half and after we scored the crowd turned a little bit.

“We were just unlucky to get done on the counter to finish the game off completely.

“It is nothing to be disheartened about, we did well and we have two home games coming up now in Everton and West Ham.”

The Clarets entertain Marco Silva’s side on Boxing Day looking for a second straight home win having seen off Brighton in their last Turf Moor fixture.

That success ended a winless run and Cork feels Burnley’s performances have started to turn in recent weeks.

“I would like to think so,” the midfielder added. “The one game that wasn’t against a top six side was Brighton and we won that game. We have to see how the next couple of home games go and try and keep these performances going.”

The Clarets had their chances at Arsenal with Cork himself spurning a good one in the second half and Ashley Westwood denied by the outstretched boot of Bernd Leno early on.

At the other end, Aubameyang took his two chances and Cork felt the little moments of quality ultimately proved the difference.

He added: “You can’t afford to leave them in one v one situations isolated with defenders because they are some of the best in the world.

“We lacked that calmness in front of goal a couple of times and we had a couple of chances that they might have taken in the same situation.

“It is something for us to improve on but I think everyone is reasonably happy with the performance but just not the result.

“We had them on the back foot a bit at 2-1,” he added. “It is tough to come a place like Arsenal and put a team like that on the back foot but I felt we did that.

“We were effective with our shape and we didn’t sit back too much in the second half and took it to them and it was just unlucky we got done on a counter attack (for the third) with the pace and the quality they have got.”