Adelaide coach Matthew Nicks has vented his "incredible" frustrations after the Crows' winless start to the season extended with a loss to Melbourne to open Gather Round.
The Crows failed to capitalise on their 54 inside 50 entries, working at a rate of 46.3% to boot just the eight goals for the evening.
A late surge wasn't enough to snap the home side's cold run, with the Crows losing their third successive home game to fall further from the top half of the competition.
Speaking after the 15-point defeat to the Demons, Nicks said his side 'looks so far off' the brand of football that brought them within reaching distance of a finals finish last year.
"There's just an incredible frustration amongst all of us," the Crows coach said.
"We get glimpses of who we know we can be and then we have periods of time where we look so far off fundamentals and execution and decision making.
"What we did have right was a system that we hadn't seen in the first three rounds. So we got an area of our game back to where it was last year, unfortunately, that exposed some of our execution, and our ball use at the moment looks so clunky.
"That can come off sometimes with a little bit of a lack of confidence, with where this group sits and a bit of pressure that you're under, sitting at 0-3 or 0-4 now.
"We looked so slow with the ball tonight at times, which is not us."
The Crows are now relying on a win over Carlton in Victoria next week to avoid a 0-5 start to 2024, with Nicks set to look at his options at selection to avoid another defeat.
The Adelaide coach revealed he believes there are " too many players" not offering their best on the field, with further frustrations coming from the fact the club's current list isn't far from their promising squad of last year.
"We've got too many players at the moment that aren't at their best," Nicks said.
"That can hurt a passage of play where you look damaging, you look threatening and all of a sudden someone will make a decision that's not what the game needs at that point for us.
"That's where the frustration comes in. We've got to find our way through that. We've got to be able to build our confidence back to where we know it can be.
"We've got to look at our team from a selection point of view and get guys in that are going to be able to play the way we play.
"We're not too dissimilar to where we were last year from a list point of view or the selected team. Unfortunately we've got a few that just aren't at their best."
Adelaide will head to Marvel Stadium for Round 5 for a meeting with a currently undefeated Blues ensemble.
Should the South Australian overcome their slow start to the season to reach September, they would be the second club to do so from a 0-4 record since 1975.
