Martin Allen believes his Barnet players have not been too pleased with their pre-season performances to date but felt that changed with tonight’s 2-1 defeat by Peterborough United.

The Bees were by far the better side in the first half but were undone by two goals in the second half from Souleymane Coulibaly and Harry Anderson, before Michael Gash’s late volley reduced the arrears.

And speaking afterwards, head coach Allen said it was not only him that had been impressed with the quality of the Bees’ performance against League One Posh.

He said: “It was much better and the players will be much happier because they have not been greatly happy with the way they have been playing. It is all part of the process.

“I just thought we dominated the game, to be honest, even playing against the wind we still had chances. From set plays we looked very strong – for and against – and overall it is a big step forward.”

And Allen likened the display to that in the memorable 2-0 win over Gateshead on the final day of last season as Barnet lifted a record third Conference title by overawing the Heed.

He reasoned: “I thought it was a very good performance from all the players involved. I thought it was very similar to Gateshead; high intensity, good, quick passing football, good interplay, good long passing play and we had enough chances in the first half to have that game buried.

“The score is not always important in pre-season, it is the level of performance and I thought tonight they were tremendous. That was back to how we play.”

Barnet struggled to carve out the same number of chances after the break as they had in the first half, though they were never oveerun, and Allen put that change down to the breeze into which his side were playing.

“We saw last season the wind plays an important part here,” he noted.

“That may sound like a bit of a schoolboy statement but we saw it numerous times last year where we were dominating a game and then we had to kick up against it and it can be quite difficult because there is no height to the stands and it just blows the ball back.

“That was how they got their first goal through the ball coming in much quicker and getting behind Michael Nelson. What we had asked for tonight was a much higher intensity. They did not train as hard yesterday, it was a much a shorter training session.”

You can read the match report from tonight’s defeat by clicking here.