Collingwood GM of Football Graham Wright feels his club is two years away from contending once again.
The Magpies sit in the bottom four after a tumultuous off-season and Wright feels they have a lot of work to do to turn things around.
“I think at the moment, we’re a little way off (contending) obviously,” he told Sportsday.
“When you say contend for the flag, I’ve always thought you need to be in the top four to do that.
“We’ll go through that over the next month or two and assess where we’re at and what we need to do and how we’re going to try and bring players in. We need to be creative around that and we need to look at every mechanism available to bring players in.
“We’ll sort that out over the next couple of months and work out how we go about it.
“Right now I think it would be fair to say we’re a couple of years away before we’re contending.
“If you ask the players right now, they feel they can win every week and that’s what you want.”
Wright denied reports that the club has sought out Justin Leppitsch, or any coaches whatsoever about opportunities beyond this year.
“From the perspective of looking at coaches and considering others, we haven’t gone down that path at all,” he said.
“I know it’s been reported that we may have, but I can guarantee you that we haven’t.
“We haven’t had one discussion with (Justin Leppitsch), no.”
Wright also clarified that the hiring of Troy Selwood was not a direct replacement for list manager Ned Guy. Selwood will assist Wright in the role.
“Troy will come in and do some list management. Him and I will work together on that,” Wright said.
“But he will be mainly recruiting and help Derek Hine from that perspective.
“He’ll perform some of the list management duties, but along with myself, contracting and that stuff, we’ll go through that together.”
The Pies currently sit 16th on the ladder with a 2-8 record ahead of Saturday’s meeting with Geelong at the MCG.