WEST Coast chief executive Trevor Nisbett believes the Eagles' dramatic form slump is linked to the club's off-field problems and subsequent national exposure as a team with social problems.

While coach John Worsfold, in a lengthy interview with The Age, said he would not make excuses for his players' diminished confidence and poor form.

Nisbett admitted the club was working closely with its players in a bid to restore their battered self-esteem.

"When you are picked on for 18 months and repeatedly told you are not a good person, it can probably have an effect on you," said Nisbett.

"If it happens to an individual they lose self-confidence and self-belief and I'm sure all the bad publicity is an underlying reason for that. Perhaps they are linking not being a good person with not being a good footballer.

I told John (Worsfold) I wasn't going to make excuses for the players but I do believe it's an underlying reason."

Worsfold was criticised for his dismal assessment of the club's prospects this season following the Eagles' fifth successive loss six nights ago to the Western Bulldogs at the Telstra Dome. But Nisbett supported his coach's view of the Eagles' prospects.

"We are trying to be realistic and John can sometimes be a bit too honest for his own good," he said.

"I have read that we are a club in disarray. We are not in disarray. We are just not playing well. My view is we have bottomed out now. We're not playing anywhere near the guys can play."

Worsfold blamed the Eagles' on-field problems as a combination of poor form by its senior leaders and the learning process being undertaken by his younger players.

"When you have Hansen, Lynch, Embley and Cox all below their best, you are going to struggle and it's not going to help your younger players."

Both Nisbett and Worsfold, who denied they had fallen out, said the club had no intention of using suspended midfielder Daniel Kerr as a trade prospect at the end of the year.

"I don't believe we're that far away," said Worsfold. "And we haven't got two or three midfielders around Daniel as we have had in the past and we need him there to help bring on the next group.

"People say Daniel is disenchanted but he must have got disenchanted pretty quickly because he signed a new contract to stay with the club last year."

Said Nisbett: "He is one of our two marquee players. He's 24 going 25, we just need to keep working with Daniel to stop his doing silly like he did last week."

Worsfold also moved to clarify his post-match comments from last weekend.

"By no means have I raised the white flag on the season," said Worsfold. "The top four will be tough and I wasn't interested in entertaining mathematical possibilities week after week.

"We can still make it. We can still have an impact on the season and we can play finals.

"We'll need to win 11 or 12 of the remaining 16 games and we'll be striving to do that."