Martin Allen spoke to barnetfc.com ahead of training this morning, to look ahead to this weekend’s clash with Carlisle United.

Discussing the last few days at The Hive and Saturday’s opponents, Martin said:

“With the extreme weather conditions this week and the amount of games that we’ve had over the last four or five weeks, we made the decision to give the players a couple of days rest.

“It’s so that they can recharge their batteries and freshen themselves up.

“We’re all back in Friday morning and we’ll all be ready for tomorrow’s match.

“Carlisle United are a very good team – they got watched during the week when they played Derby County.

“They were unlucky not to win that game.

“Keith Curle’s team were very good last season, they’ve improved throughout the summer and I believe that they’ll be right up in the top four come the end of the season.

“I think it’ll be a testing game and really challenging tomorrow, because they are a very good team.

“We have got a couple of injuries, but I’m not going to let anybody know who they are at the moment.

“But we are going to have to make some changes to our team tomorrow – the public will have to wait and see with that one.

“We’re always looking to improve, whether the match is home or away.

“It is important to the supporters when you’re winning your home games though – it creates a nice atmosphere.

“It was a brilliant ending to our last home match, when the players did really well right until the very end.

“I thought the support, the atmosphere and the backing that day was pretty special.

“We’ve got to make The Hive a good place for our supporters.”

The Barnet manager also had some news for Bees’ fans regarding winger Luke Gambin:

“We’ve had some enquiries for Luke Gambin,” he said.

“Luke has rejected a new contract from the Chairman.

“He has got a year to go on his current contract, but he hasn’t signed a new one and he is a very good player.

“There are clubs from League One and another one in League Two that want to buy him.

“The Chairman is talking to other clubs about Luke at the moment – that’s why he wasn’t involved last weekend.

“If he had signed the contract then I’d have been chuffed to bits to keep him.

“He is one of my favourites and I absolutely love his company.

“I’ve loved watching him develop, but it looks like we’re going to be losing Luke; either on Friday or over this weekend.

“But that’ll just give an opportunity to another player.

“Of course we’ve just signed Jamal Campbell-Ryce, so I think those two things probably go hand in hand.”