THERE’S an argument in football that the games you need to win are the ones against teams you are competing with in your ‘mini league’.

It’s a valid point, and there is no doubt games such as those at Loftus Road on Saturday are absolutely crucial during a season, for the chance to stop your rivals getting points as much as advancing your own cause.

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But the festive period for the Clarets sees them play teams in the top half and likely to fill the higher places in the league, and it’s a spell of games that could make or break their season.

Between now and New Year’s Day they face Southampton at home, Tottenham away, Liverpool at Turf Moor, Manchester City at the Etihad and Newcastle away.

It’s a run of five games to strike fear into the hearts of most Burnley fans. But they simply can’t afford come out of the other end of that spell still on 12 points. If they do then they are likely to be cut adrift at the bottom of the league, and once you are in that position in January, it’s very hard to get back into the race for survival.

Sunderland proved it isn’t impossible to do last season, when they recovered from 14 points after 20 games on the first weekend of January to end with 38 points and stay up.

If securing a point a game is considered the target for survival, and it should be seeing as it has been enough to stay up in 10 of the last 11 Premier League seasons, then you don’t really want to leave yourself too much to do in the final months of the season.

If the Clarets can pick up four points from those next five games they will be on 16 points, needing another 22 from the last 18 games to reach a point a game, a not insurmountable target, especially the way the fixtures fall.

One thing they do have in their favour approaching the second half of the season is that they will face most of their survival rivals at Turf Moor. Of the other five teams in the bottom six Burnley have only played Hull at home, which they won, and have played four away, and Leicester, QPR, Crystal Palace and West Brom must all travel to East Lancashire between January and May.

A haul of two points from the four away games against those sides isn’t ideal, but they can consider themselves unlucky not to have secured at least a point at Loftus Road.

Sean Dyche knows as well as anyone though that hard luck stories won’t count for anything come May, and he has admitted as much. The pressure will be off a little in the next five games, but it is essential they can pick up some unexpected points along the way to give them a chance heading into January.

If they can do that then it will set them up perfectly for the second half of the season, beginning with successive homes games against QPR and Crystal Palace in January.