COLLINGWOOD coach Mick Malthouse has warned there will be changes to his team after the hot-and-cold Pies struggled to see off the 15th-placed Brisbane Lions on Saturday night.

The ladder-leading Magpies were outplayed in the first and final terms at the MCG, leaving Malthouse unimpressed with the 18-point win.

"There will be a few players in [the team] who would be a bit nervous," Malthouse said.

"Is that good? No because you want everyone to play well for most of the day. Is it redeemable? Absolutely.

"Does it mean that the side will stay as it is? Well we'd like to think we'd get players back next week and we'll shuffle the side around to see what is the most appropriate [line-up] to travel to Subiaco."

Malthouse lamented the uneven performance that he agreed was a timely warning sign ahead of a finals campaign.

"It was played spasmodically really," he said.

"We were good, then we were poor. We were quite effective, then we were very ineffective. We were quick and then we were slow. We were clean then we were fumbling. We were good defensively then we were quite poor defensively.

"It was a game of contrasts for us.

"Unfortunately we really struggled to maintain any sort of consistency in so many areas.

"You can't just switch on form. Form is there or it's not there. It's not a matter of turning some tap on."

The ability of Alan Didak, who has struggled with a calf injury, to play out a full game was one for the few positives the coach could see in the performance with the first-quarter experiment of playing Chris Tarrant in attack failing.

Not that Malthouse was too concerned.

"We don't really want Chris up forward, quite frankly," he said.

"I think he's better suited down the back and that's strange for me to say that. He will very rarely journey into multiple positions."