Brisbane Lions recruit Allen Christensen says fans will see him at his peak soon enough as he nears full fitness after an interrupted pre-season.

The former Cat was one of Brisbane’s key off-season signings but has come in for criticism over his patchy form – and from Lions legend Jason Akermanis, who recently labelled Christensen and teammate Josh Green as overweight.

Christensen, who had back surgery in September, says the club is happy with his progress but promised he has much more to give.

“I’m not quite there, but I’m still running at a pretty high level and covering the ground pretty well,” he said on Tuesday.

“That’s all I can really do, is just keep playing games and keep getting fitter and fitter and start breaking a few more lines, which hopefully comes in the next couple of weeks.”

Christensen was decidedly non-plussed about Akermanis’ suggestion earlier this month that he was carrying extra weight.

“All I worry about is what happens internally and I knew they were happy with me,” he said.

“I’m not a pretty picture anyway so it doesn’t really bother me.

“My own form, I’m just ticking along, doing everything they’re asking of me.

“I’m trying to hit the scoreboard and help these young blokes as much as I can.

“I might not be getting the numbers I was getting at Geelong but as long as Leppa and that are happy with the forward structures and forward set-ups that I’m putting in, there’s not much more I can do.”

The Lions sit 16th on the ladder with a 2-6 record, after Sunday’s big defeat to Essendon snapped a two-game winning streak.

Christensen said while it may hurt in the short term, every loss will bring this youthful Brisbane side closer to where they want to be.

“Even though you don’t want to get beaten by 10 goals every week, you keep getting experience,” he said.

“You can’t beat experience.

“The young key defenders keep playing on the best key forwards and they’ll keep learning.

“That’s just what it is.”

Brisbane are the early favourites to knock off fellow strugglers St Kilda when they travel to the Gabba on Sunday.

“We’ll have to be on our toes again – they can play some good footy when they want to, they’re a really up-and-coming team,” Christensen said.

“They get a lot of numbers around the ball and have some really damaging midfielders who have been getting some really high numbers.”