Martin Allen says Barnet have some long term stability now and believes for the first time they have a crop of young players coming through to build for the future with.

The Bees had spent eight years in the bottom tier of the Football League before finally leaving it too late to pull off a final day escape act and were relegated under Edgar Davids in 2013.

In the two seasons prior to dropping back into the Conference, Allen was brought in to keep the club up in the final weeks of the campaign. Although he jumped ship for Notts County in 2011, on both occasions Barnet survived.

But now the Bees head coach insists it is time for great stability at Barnet.

Currently ten points clear of the relegation zone, Allen will have been in charge for two years in March – the longest spell anyone has had in the hot seat since Paul Fairclough between 2004 and 2008.

“The club has been a yo-yo club up and down in these divisions,” said Allen. “With the budgets now of some of those clubs in the Conference, that is an extremely difficult division to get out of.

“You’ve got to get some long-term stability at Barnet now. They’ve always spoken over the years about getting some young players but there’s not really been any come through.

“We’ve got a good group just behind us now. A lot of them are out on loan and training back here very hard. So you’re looking at the longer term for the club evolving.”

This is already Allen’s longest spell in charge, having only been at the helm for a year in his first stint 12 years ago before joining League One side Brentford.

And the former West Ham United and Queens Park Rangers midfielder says he couldn’t continue to manage as he did when called in to firefight in his last two spells.

Allen explained: “I very much doubt it’s fun for the supporters, it’s not much fun for the chairman and I doubt it’s much fun for the players ringing me up with two months to go and asking: ‘Can you come and get us out of trouble?’

“Each time I’ve done it it’s worked, thank God, with a bit of help from a couple of other people. But I wouldn’t imagine anyone at this football club wants to keep going through that.

“Being involved in it is stressful, unenjoyable and difficult. It’s a style of management I could never adapt to for the other 45 weeks of the year.

“It’s a very much a black and white, dictatorial style of [management by] fear. I don’t really manage teams like that at all.

“When I’ve come back here it’s always been my nasty, horrible face, making sure the players do exactly what I want them to do and playing percentage football and trying to get a win at any cost.

“It would be mentally and physically impossible to do that for 45 weeks of the year.”