Two-time premiership player David King still believes Carlton needs to remain patient and stay the course, despite their horror 2018 season.
The Blues have only won the single game this year and have an average losing margin of 48 points against the bottom six teams on the ladder.
King said the changes Carlton has made since Mick Malthouse left and Brendon Bolton took over have been unprecedented and it takes time to adjust.
“I’ve never seen a list overhauled in three years like I’ve seen Carlton’s,” he told SEN’s Crunch Time.
“They’ve made 40 changes to their list in three years. The next highest is the Gold Coast who’ve been as much of a mess as anyone and they’ve turned over 34.
“If you go to the other end of the spectrum, you’ve got the Dogs and St Kilda who’ve only turned over 22 players.
“That’s almost half of what Carlton’s done. It’s not just a new team, there’s so many new faces coming in, you’ve got no cohesion, no shared experiences and you’re still learning the game plan and how to be an AFL footballer and how to be a professional.
“There’s so much learning for this group to go through still – they’re still two to three years away and they know that.
“You don’t go to school every day and walk home with a report card.”
AFL Hall of Famer Terry Wallace agreed saying people should never have expected Carlton to take a step forward this year given their off-season changes.
“They were more experienced in their first year and this where people say they’ve gone backwards, well have you gone backwards or have you taken a step backwards to go forwards?” Wallace said.
“With the players that were winning five and six games two years ago, they were probably not going to take them to where they wanted to get to but they were the foot soldiers that were there that you had to play while you were getting your kids in place.
“I think that they knew they were going to go backwards at some stage.”
King expects Carlton to make another lot of changes at the end of the season.
“When you have a look at their list, you could make eight changes again this year,” he said.
Aaron Mullett, Alex Silvagni, Cameron O’Shea, Cameron Polson, Dale Thomas, Jarrod Pickett, Jed Lamb, Jesse Glass-McCasker, Kade Simpson, Kym LeBois, Matt Shaw, Matthew Lobbe, Matthew Wright, Nick Graham, Sam Kerridge and Sam Rowe remain out of contract at Carlton.
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