Steve Burr says Chester FC want to keep improving having racked up a fourth straight win at Lincoln City on Saturday to move into the Vanarama Conference's top half.

Sean McConville’s first-half strike sealed a 1-0 victory at Sincil Bank and although talk of the play-offs is perhaps still premature, it no longer sounds so outlandish.

Chester are now 10th in the table and have a crucial home game this weekend against Eastleigh, another team chasing a play-off place. A fifth successive win would take the Blues above the Spitfires and even closer to the top five.

"I think it just goes to show you what you can do if you start winning games and putting wins together and we're looking up, that's the main thing," said Burr.

"It was good again to come to Lincoln and see improvement on two sides to our game: a clean sheet and we defended very, very well I thought and we looked a threat when we went forward.

"I think it just shows that when you get on that run of winning then confidence runs right through the term and you can see that at the minute.

"Everybody's chomping at the bit to get in the team, which is what we want. It's a great atmosphere and the lads are buzzing in the dressing room.

"The lads are buzzing in training but that comes with winning games and it just has a great effect and a knock on effect throughout the club. There's a great atmosphere around the place at the minute and we want to keep improving and keep continuing that."

McConville’s ninth goal of the campaign, nicely teed up by Oliver McBurnie, clinched a deserved and hard-fought three points with the manager describing the match-winner as 'tremendous'.

Burr said: “I think the move started on the edge of our box didn’t it? We knocked it about and what a great finish: he spun on it and it was one of them that you catch and he certainly caught it.

“It was a tremendous goal but I thought Oli did some good work leading up to that. It was nice to see us pass our way out of our half and into their box and finish with a goal.”

Chester never looked in danger of surrendering the lead even with the Imps committing more and more men forward as time ran down.

Lincoln lacked inspiration, resorting to lumping balls forward which was bread and butter for impressive centre halves Michael Kay and Ben Heneghan.

Jon Worsnop had only one real save to make, a routine catch from Charlee Adams’ 25-yard strike, as the Blues kept a fourth clean sheet in five matches.

Burr said: “I thought it was a good performance but I was a bit disappointed we didn’t make use of good possession in the second-half, which probably made it look like they put us under a lot of pressure but I thought we coped with everything really.

“We dealt with the long ball, we dealt with the long throw and it’s great to get a win at Lincoln because they’ve been winning some games here so it’s been good for us to come here and beat a club like Lincoln.

"We coped well with their tactics, that's how they play and I thought we coped with that well. I never felt in any danger and like I say I'm just a bit disappointed we didn't go on and get a few more goals in the second half."

Heneghan came off with a dead leg towards the end but should be fine to face Eastleigh, however Kay will miss out after a harsh yellow card took him to 10 bookings for the season and an automatic two-match suspenison.

Kieran Charnock and fit-again captain Matty Brown are in line to replace him.

Burr and midfielder Kingsley James will link up with the England C squad on Monday for the game with Cyprus Under 21s in Larnaca on Tuesday.