Martin Allen says teams will come to The Hive and raise their game and Barnet must learn to deal with it if they are to win promotion.

The Bees drew a blank in front of goal for the first time in ten Conference fixtures on Tuesday night – losing 1-0 to Wrexham at home.

Despite defeat, the Bees remain top of the Conference, as they have for seven out of ten weeks of this fledgling season.

And Barnet were left frustrated after the Dragons snatched the winner against the run of play - via Robbie Evans - shortly after half-time.

Reflecting on just a second defeat of the season, Allen said: “It’s too early to look at that league table. It is what happens when you are top of the league, everyone knows it.

“Everybody is getting used to being the top of the table team. All of the reports, the pictures, the photographs and the television, the radio - everybody saying how fantastic Barnet are. You have to live with it, and you have to learn to live with it and learn to play with it.

“Teams are going to come here and raise their game by an extra yard. I saw this Wrexham team play at Bristol Rovers the other night and they are fully committed. There is no doubt about it, every one of their players has a go. That makes it tough for the opposition to break them down, like it was for us tonight. We didn’t show enough creativity and calmness to open them up.”

Allen continued: “Every game we play now is a cup final for everybody. Whenever we pull into town we are the top of the table team. Everybody is looking for an upset and everybody knows that they have got to be on their game. Everybody keeps telling us what a good team we are and we have got to get used to it.

“It is a different kind of psychology. We are certainly not the underdogs anymore, everywhere we go we are favourites. It takes a little bit of time to get used to that, but we will. We’ll get there. They are an honest group of players and we don’t have get to the number of points that we have now by not being good enough.”

Player-coach Jon Nurse was handed his first start of the season against the Welsh side and Allen was pleased with the 33-year-old’s contribution alongside John Akinde.

He enthused: “I thought he [Nurse] was superb on Saturday at Telford, he really was. He led the line well; he certainly improved our team when he went onto the pitch.

“He’s got energy, he’s got enthusiasm and he has got a running power. He turned their team numerous times during the first half, but we didn’t quite get a goal from his good play.

"I thought he was superb and if anything he should have stayed on the pitch for longer than I kept him on and that was a mistake on my part I think.”