Martin Allen feels that he has plenty of options in his squad and believes that Barnet’s youngsters are more than good enough to play in the Bees’ first team.
Mauro Vilhete, Justin Amaluzor & Josh Vickers all played in Tuesday night’s 2-2 draw with MK Dons, and Martin was pleased with his side’s performance:
“I thought the team played very well,” he said.
“It was a testing first half hour – MK Dons played a full first team after they didn’t have a good day out last Saturday, losing 2-0 at home.
“I wasn’t expecting them to play a full team, but when I read about their performance I thought that Karl Robinson might change it like he did.
“They started well and we rode our luck a couple of times, but as the first half went on we got closer and closer.
“We had a couple of chances ourselves too, then in the second half we just dominated the game.
“It’s a shame that we went down to ten men with Justin Amaluzor’s injury because I think that we’d probably have scored again with 11 players, not just held on.
“We looked fitter, stronger and we looked a much better team.
“All the players at the club give me something to think about when it comes to team selection and we’ve got different options.
“Ross Eames has done a great job with our young players and James Russell has worked on the fitness of the first team.
“I’ve got a lot of options now – even though we’ve got a couple of long term injuries, the youngsters are more than good enough to come in and play.”
Next up for Barnet is a trip to Newport County and Martin was full of praise for Saturday’s opponents:
“They were in the Conference themselves a few years ago and they’ve now established themselves in League Two,” he said.
“So the whole club has done really well to hang on, keep going and build for the long term.
“You can just go up then go straight back down and not handle it, but they’ve done really well.
“It’s not easy to go straight from the Conference into the League Two play-offs or promotion places, like Bristol Rovers have done.
“They spent bundles and bundles of money, which us and Newport County haven’t got.
“Newport are a good club and I enjoy going down to Rodney Parade.
“I always get well looked after by the people behind the scenes – the crowd is full of passion and you always know that it’s going to be a hard game down there.”
Martin also revealed that Bira Dembele and Justin Amaluzor will miss this weekend’s match through injury, saying:
“Bira has got sore ribs so he’s not involved at the moment.
“Hoyte, Gash and Pearson are obviously all out with cruciate injuries.
“Justin is out with a hip flexor injury at the moment – that’s going to be two or three weeks.
“It’s a real shame because he has been fantastic in training and deserves a chance to play in our team.”
