Dayne Beams has left a hole in Collingwood's midfield and the team's worst football gets a "two or three out of 10".

That is the frank assessment of coach Nathan Buckley who says the club has a lot of work to do to catch up to the best teams in the competition.

The Magpies slipped to 4-3 and eighth on the ladder following Saturday night's loss to Fremantle at Patersons Stadium, and Buckley admitted the team needed to find form.

Speaking on Fox Footy's On The Couch, he said Collingwood best football remained at a high standard, but the team was dropping too far when out of form.

"When we fall off we fall off to a two or three out of 10, rather than staying at a six or a seven and that is really what has hurt us early in the season," Buckley said.

"Footy changes pretty quickly week to week, let alone year to year, so the question, 'Are we a good team?', can only be answered by performance.

"Over this season we are going to have to answer that week by week."

Collingwood had an 11-2 record halfway through last season, but the club has gone on to win 10 of its 19 games since.

This year, the Magpies are ranked 17th in centre bounce clearance differential, 12th for time in forward half, 14th for opposition goals per inside 50 and 14th for points against.

Buckley said the concerning statistics showed Collingwood had "a fair bit of work to do to be up with the very best sides in the competition".

He highlighted dramatic momentum swings in matches so far this season.

"We gave up 100 points against Hawthorn in the second half (in round three) after holding them to 47.

"We were pretty happy with our first half but our second half was poor.

"We gave up 80 points to Essendon in the second half after being thereabouts, only a couple of goals down early in the last quarter.

"Against Fremantle on Saturday night we gave up 75 points in the first and fourth quarters combined.

"We kept Fremantle to 12 inside 50s for the second and third [quarters] combined but your low level can't drop off that far if you want to be a good football team."

Buckley said Collingwood, like all sides, was a "slave to personnel" at times, but reinforcements were on the way, with midfielder Luke Ball set to return against Geelong on Saturday night.

He said forgotten veteran Alan Didak was also in the mix but the team was really missing last year's best and fairest, Beams.

"[Beams] is one of our hardest two-way runners. He has left a bit of a hole in our midfield. 'Pendles' is being heavily tagged  … it makes it pretty tough ... [and Dane Swan] probably gets a little bit more attention because of that."

Following the loss to Fremantle, he said the team needed to start defending better as a team "across our whole 22".

"It's all over (not just the midfield). You need to find a balance of forward running and defensive running," he said.

"At times we feel we are not working hard enough to support our defence. And at times we're not working hard enough to go and put pressure on our front half to hold the ball in there.

"It is a little bit of a work-rate issue. As we've detailed, it is probably six quarters over the seven games that we're looking at.

"Now that is too many. If we want to be a good team we've got to fix that and we get a chance this Saturday night."