Martin Allen was pleased with his side’s performance in their final pre-season friendly of the summer, despite going down 1-0 to Wycombe Wanderers on Saturday.

Speaking after the game, Martin was full of praise for his team:

“I thought that we were absolutely superb today. We created numerous chances and dominated the game in both halves.

“They had a couple of chances in the first half from set plays and scored with the one shot that they had in the second half from 30 yards into the top corner, which was a brilliant goal.

“But we have had more than enough chances to have won ten games so I’m really pleased with our players to be honest.”

Barnet were unfortunate not to take the lead themselves on 66 minutes when Luke Gambin slotted home only to see the referee pull play back for a foul on John Akinde in the build-up, a decision which Martin revealed even the referee thought was wrong in hindsight:

“We’d scored and were ahead but he’s disallowed it and brought it back for a free-kick. I think the referee would be the first to say that he has made an error of judgement.

“Fair play to the referee, he apologised to me afterwards which I thought was really decent of him. I think he’s realised that he’s made an error but there you go, let’s not get too het up over it and let’s move on.”

Barnet made a few changes to their line-up from the team that started against Margate in midweek, with Martin explaining the reasoning behind one of those in particular:

“Andy Yiadom has got a sore foot so he didn’t play. He could have played but I didn’t want to risk him.

“I also wanted to look at Mauro Vilhete at right-back just in case we need to make changes and I thought Mauro today was outstanding which I was really, really pleased about, and also really pleased for Mauro.”

Looking back over Barnet’s pre-season preparations, Martin admitted that he was pleased with how they had gone and was now looking forward to starting the season proper against Chester next Saturday:

“I’m absolutely delighted. We’ve beaten Stevenage, we were close to beating Luton, we were close to beating Peterborough, we were fantastic against Brentford and were 1-0 up so there are a lot of good signs.

“I made the drive up to Chester to watch them play against Tranmere. They are a very good team, they play open, passing football and are very exciting to watch and then last night I went to see Bristol Rovers play against Coventry and they were superb in front of their own supporters.

“We’ve got a lot of good players and we’re in a good place and a good position at the moment. It is very exciting and we are really looking forward to the ten-month competition.”