Burnley midfielder Jack Cork grew up dreaming of representing a big club such as Liverpool and is relishing the “special” feeling of testing himself against the European champions this weekend.
Liverpool top the embryonic Premier League standings and are the only club to have collected maximum points from their opening three fixtures, having beaten Norwich, Southampton and Arsenal.
The Reds are heavy favourites to make it four wins from four at Turf Moor in the Saturday teatime kick-off but Cork is adamant Burnley will be no pushovers.
He said in quotes on the club’s official website: “It’s always nice to play against the bigger teams. There’s something different – special.
“It’s a good challenge and a good test. When you’re young and growing up you want to be playing against these sort of teams; you dream of playing for the Liverpools and Manchester Uniteds.
“It’s good to play them and say ‘I’m good enough to do this at this level.’
“It’s good to test yourself against the best players in the world and there’s nothing better than the current European champions. You can’t look past that. We know it’s going to be a difficult game.
“But I think we have a good history against the best teams, not necessarily winning all the time but going close and making things difficult for them.”
Burnley have taken four points so far; starting their campaign by beating Southampton then losing narrowly to Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium, while only Raul Jimenez’s penalty equaliser in stoppage time denied them a victory at Wolves last week.
Cork added: “It’s a very positive start. It was a great start against Southampton and then the next two games at Arsenal and Wolves we feel unlucky we didn’t get more from them.
“If we play the way we have in the first three games we should have enough this season to do well.
“But it’s always a tough league and it’s easy to say we’ve had a good start.
“You can never afford to relax and we just started getting our head around that after the start of last season when we weren’t doing the things that make the team successful.
“We know we have to play a certain way every week or we don’t get results.”
