Martin Allen labelled match-winner Luisma Villa as ‘magic’ but revealed the midfielder had nearly been let go in the summer.

The Spaniard scored Barnet’s injury-time winner in a 2-1 win over Alfreton Town this afternoon, just four days after scoring an equally-spectacular goal in a 2-2 friendly draw with Luton Town.

Bottom-of-the-league Alfreton took the lead shortly after the break through Massiah McDonald, who rose highest to nod home Daniel Gray’s free-kick unchallenged.

The home side levelled just after the hour when Charlie MacDonald converted a penalty following a foul on John Akinde.

And, with just seconds left to play, Luisma completed the turnaround by lifting an inch-perfect free-kick home from 20 yards.

Acknowledging the impact of the Spanish playmaker, Allen revealed he had nearly been allowed to leave in the summer.

He said: “I think that it is only right to let everybody know that when I sat down with the chairman over the summer, Luisma was in the grey area. There was a question mark over whether we were going to sign him or not.

“The chairman said to me that Luisma has the ability to come on and do something different, to make a great pass or to score from a free kick. And lo and behold, the game goes to the 94th minute and Luisma finds the free kick and Mr Kleanthous was absolutely spot on. That decision has won us the three points.”

Allen added: “Luisma played so well at Luton on Tuesday, he was fantastic. I knew that he was going to be going on today, he was very close to actually starting the game. He’s got magic. The boy has got magic.”

The Bees struggled to deal with winless Alfreton but Allen was pleased his side found the extra required to overcome the winless Reds.

He explained: “I don’t think that we really put in a great performance for our supporters, but I am sure that they will be very impressed, relieved and pleased that they keep going right until the end.

“You could buckle. Let’s be honest, we’ve all seen games where there’s no spirit, there’s no fight back, there’s no comeback and the result just goes out of the window and everybody goes home naffed off that they players haven’t found extra.

“We have trained the players so that they can find extra. We have beasted them at times during pre-season training, and then asked them to do another session practising for exactly this.”

Sixteen-year-old forward Matt Stevens made his Bees’ debut, becoming the youngest player in the club’s history after coming off the bench, and Allen likened the frontman to Robbie Fowler.

He enthused: “He scores goals. Every week I have a report done on the Youth Team performance and Ross (Eames) the coach tells me ‘he scored a hat trick again.’ The other day he didn’t score and apparently he had the right hump and kicked a football in the dressing room.

“He scored in training against the first team yesterday and he scored at Luton. The boy has got that Robbie Fowler-like knack of finding the gap to score. He scored 30-odd goals last year and got released by Reading, so I think that we have done pretty well to get him.”