Carlton coach Mick Malthouse has called on his players to eradicate the mental lapses he believes have been a major factor in the Blues’ winless start to the AFL season.

The Blues need to overcome Essendon at the MCG on Sunday night to avoid a disastrous 0-3 opening to the 2014 premiership campaign and Malthouse said it was crucial for his players to stand up in the face of opposition momentum.

“It’s easy to give it the flick pass, but the facts are that between when the game starts and when the game finishes we as coaches will do a certain amount, but the reality is it’s got to be controlled by the playing group,” Malthouse said on Saturday.

“It’s the ability for us to eat into that momentum and just halt it enough to perhaps regenerate the game that we want or to negate the game that they want.

“We can do something as coaches, but it’s a collective. We will try to reorganise the side, but we expect our leaders to take control and take charge of certain parts of the game.”

Despite opening the season with losses to Port Adelaide and Richmond, Malthouse said the Blues would take a lot of confidence into the clash against their traditional rival.

“We’ve been relatively good at certain stages through the first two matches,” he said.

“We were quite poor in the last quarter of the Port game and we got off to a slow start last week, which was annoying because we generally start well and then we kicked ourselves out of it in many respects. But there’s a lot for good stuff.

“When you enter into any game of football, or any sport, you’ve got to take the positives with you and we’ve got some very good positives out of those games.”

Carlton made two changes ahead of the clash with Brock McLean and Kane Lucas both omitted in favour of Andrew Carrazzo and Andrew Walker, who is returning from a one-game suspension.

McLean drew widespread criticism for remaining on the bench at three-quarter time after being subbed out of last week’s game against the Tigers, but Malthouse denied that was a factor in the onballer’s axing.

“His form hasn’t been good enough,” he said.

“He knows what he has to do to get back in.”

Malthouse said that he had not gone out of his way to counsel Bryce Gibbs after a poor showing against Richmond amid intense speculation over his future at the club beyond this season.

“He’s not Robinson Crusoe – every player is spoken to about their game – about the positives and the areas where they’ve got to improve and Bryce is no different to anybody else,” he said.

“There are certain players that seem to get a lot more focus and he just happens to be one of them, but you’ve got to deal with that.”