JACK Cork believes Burnley need a ‘couple more wins’ to feel comfortable in the race for Premier League survival.

The Clarets saw their eight-game unbeaten league run ended at Newcastle on Tuesday, allowing the Magpies to leapfrog them in the table.

But defeats for Cardiff and Brighton mean Sean Dyche’s side still have a cushion to play with ahead of Saturday’s home game against Crystal Palace.

And midfielder Cork wants to bounce back with three points to ensure there is no nervous end to the season.

Speaking after the 2-0 defeat at St James’ Park the 29-year-old said: "It would have been better if we could have pulled away a little bit more but results have gone our way. We need to get a couple more wins and see how we are from there."

“We've got some good games coming up, not including the Liverpool game, but we've got a few games where we can look to get some points in.”

Despite the midweek defeat, Burnley have averaged two points a game in the Premier League since the dismal 5-1 home reverse to Everton on Boxing Day.

"We knew that we needed to put things right at the start of the year after that Everton game and we did that,” said Cork.

“We've made ourselves hard to beat, we set up well and were well organised so we need to get back to that at the weekend.”

The Clarets were two down at the break in the North East and couldn’t conjure up a response to take a positive result back to East Lancashire.

And Cork wants the Clarets to learn the lessons from the defeat to Rafa Bentiez’s side.

"It suits us if we're still in games in the second half or we're a goal up,” he added.

“We know how to hold on or how to hang in there. Sometimes, though, when we're a goal down and we need to create it feels like we force it a little bit too much.

“We need to relax and realise we're still in the game.

“"It's disappointing that we didn't play as well as we have been lately.

“I think everyone could see that, we know that, and it looked like we ran out of ideas.

“We tried to do the same things as we did against Tottenham but they played a completely different way and it wasn't our night.

“They were up for it from the start and a great goal made it difficult for us to come back.

"It was another good chance for us to get points against a team in and around us. We had a great run, eight games unbeaten, but it was always going to come to an end at some stage, it was just disappointing in the way that it has.

"They dropped quite deep and we found the balls up to the front two quite hard to play. We ran out of ideas, we weren't as good on the ball as we have been, we were sloppy with our passing and we weren't as on it as Newcastle were. I think they deserved the win in the end.

"We had some good chances; Tarky had a good one and we had a couple towards the end but you get a feel for games and they were more in control of it than we were.

"If Tarks scores and we go in at 2-1 at half-time anything can happen. That might give us that extra bit of a push coming out in the second half. We've just got to look forward to a home game against Palace.”