Mark Kennedy: Lincoln City 'did themselves proud' in West Ham defeat, says Imps boss
- Published
Lincoln City's Alex Mitchell had a goal ruled out against West Ham for offside
Lincoln City boss Mark Kennedy says his League One side "did themselves justice" in their narrow defeat by West Ham United in the Carabao Cup.
Tomas Soucek's second-half goal earned the Premier League visitors a hard-fought win against a Imps side two divisions and 50 places below them in the English football pyramid.
Lincoln threatened throughout and even produced more shots on goal in defeat.
"Sometimes you can win a game and you lose a game," Kennedy said.
"And I say that really carefully because, trust me, in our environment we hate losing, but I think there was a huge amount of positives to come out of the performance."
Lincoln were ultimately made to rue a number of missed chances in front of a packed home crowd at the LNER Stadium, as Alex Mitchell had a close-range effort ruled out for offside and Reeco Hackett-Fairchild had the hosts' best chance clawed away by West Ham goalkeeper Lukasz Fabianski.
"We are very proud," Kennedy told BBC Radio Lincolnshire.
"I said to the guys after the game, 'I really don't like using that because you hear that all the time, but I'm personally very proud of you and you should all be very proud of yourselves'.
"We had to be at our very best to give West Ham a game and potentially hope that they didn't play well to win the game, but I thought they were very good tonight.
"I was really pleased to see the lads rise to the occasion and play against such high-level performers, a high-level manager and high-level team and do themselves such justice.
"I just think we came out on the wrong side of a bit of luck tonight and unfortunately we have been knocked out of the cup."