{"id":132951,"date":"2026-03-08T17:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T17:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/132951\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T17:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T17:37:09","slug":"great-for-the-league-reading-chief-reflects-on-lincoln-city-title-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/132951\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Great For The League\u2019 \u2013 Reading Chief Reflects On Lincoln City Title Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\"\"Credit Graham Burrell<\/p>\n

Reading co-CEO Joe Jacobson has praised Lincoln City for the title challenge this season, stating it is good for League One.<\/p>\n

Jacobson, who bagged a hat trick against the Imps in Danny Cowley\u2019s final game in charge, is now working for the Royals. He\u2019s also a pundit on Sky Sports, and he was quizzed on the automatic promotion race this season.<\/p>\n

He singled out City, Cardiff and Bolton as teams that were much better than the chasing pack, but turned his attention<\/a> to Lincoln in the wake of yesterday\u2019s unbelievable 2-0 win in Wales<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe top two are just so clinical in the way they\u2019re winning games at the moment, and Lincoln proved yesterday in front of a massive crowd at Cardiff City that they\u2019re not getting phased,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the pressure\u2019s on, you see a lot of teams drop out, don\u2019t you, when the pressure\u2019s on, when they\u2019ve got something they can see in sight, but they\u2019re kicking on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Imps are 18 unbeaten in the league, with Wycombe the last to inflict defeat, and even that came in the last minute of the game after we\u2019d fought back to 2-2. It\u2019s a serious run of form that has left us ten points clear of Bolton, and they have just ten matches left to play.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Credit Graham Burrell<\/p>\n

That form is almost record-equalling, and it means we\u2019re 11 points ahead of where we were in 2020\/21, the last time we got close to promotion to the Championship. That came in Covid times, when nothing was really good for League One, but Jacobson believes this season, what we\u2019re achieving is great for the league.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re in unbelievable form, and I\u2019m glad actually, for the league, there\u2019s a lot of big teams in this league, and I don\u2019t think many at the start of the season would have given Lincoln much hope of being in the automatic, so I think it\u2019s great for the league.\u201d<\/p>\n

There has been a train of thought that the league is weak, hence us, Bradford and Stevenage challenging, but I think the opposite. Many teams, from Plymouth and Reading outside the top six up to Bradford and Stevenage, have made this an interesting division by being able to win games against the top six and keep the gap close.<\/p>\n

Only two teams have managed to keep their runs going, and now one stands tall as undefeated in 2026, and that\u2019s Lincoln City. That said, five of our remaining 11 matches are against sides that have beaten us this season, starting with Exeter City, our game in hand, this Tuesday.<\/p>\n

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Related<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit Graham Burrell Reading co-CEO Joe Jacobson has praised Lincoln City for the title challenge this season, stating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-132951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}