Michael Skubala felt Lincoln were just too strong for Reading

Michael Skubala felt his Lincoln side had too much for Reading as they opened their League One campaign with a 2-0 win at the LNER Stadium.

Rob Street put the hosts ahead after 21 minutes, latching on to George Wickens’ clearance and squeezing the ball past Joel Pereira via a deflection.

Street went close again before Mamadi Caba Camara’s strike for Reading was ruled out for offside.

Jack Moylan saw his close-range header superbly saved by Pereira just after the interval, before Lewis Wing almost levelled for the visitors when his fierce shot was pushed on to the post by Wickens.

But the Imps doubled their lead in the 67th minute when Reeco Hackett finished coolly after latching on to Conor McGrandles’ inch-perfect through ball to secure the win.

Lincoln manager Skubala said: “I thought we were solid. You want to start well on the first day and I thought today, as a group, we had too much for Reading.

“We want this place to be a hard place to come and the fans play a massive part in that and they were fantastic today.

“We had to weather a few moments but I think all-in-all it was a hell of a team performance.

“We want to be aggressive, not just in the duels, we want to go forward and put teams under pressure and get on top of teams.

“We want teams to fear us when they come here and there were some magnificent performances today.

“The lads have worked so hard, you can knock on the door or just stop but they kept knocking on the door and I think we could have scored more.

“The effort, the endeavour and the grind, they just couldn’t handle us as a team and that’s what we want to be. We want to be the strongest team we can be.”

Reading manager Noel Hunt felt the Royals were unlucky to seee a goal chalked off.

Hunt said: ”It was a tough day and we knew it was going to be tough as Lincoln have a good record up here.

“It’s a hard one to take as we had a goal disallowed for offside when the player was three yards onside and it’s baffling to me how that can happen at this level.

“It’s all about fine margins and I thought we took control of the game after the first goal up until the second went in and then I think we dropped off a little.

“It will take a few weeks for some of the new boys to settle in but I still thought there were really good spells in the second half and much of the first half to give us something to look at.

“The players are all in an okay place, of course nobody wants to lose and they are a bit sore about that after the game, but I said we’ve got to stick together and work to improve.”