Essendon will not become too Brendan Fevola focused Matthew Knights said in his weekly media conference today.

“They are getting an even contribution from a lot of players which is significant for them,” he said.

“Their come-from-behind win against Port was significant and then, last week against Collingwood, there was intensity for all four quarters and we are going to have to match it.

“Our form has been better for the last three weeks so we must take that into the Carlton game. We played pretty strong footy last week so we should go in with a good attitude.”

 
Knights said Lloyd would continue to play up the ground as he did to great effect on Friday against the Eagles.

“I had a one-on-one with Matthew last week and we both agreed it would a great opportunity to get him up the ground as captain to be involved in the game and live in the moment because sometimes being deep or at full forward you have to wait for periods of time,” he said.

“It’s fair to say that is a philosophy that we will go after aggressively for the rest of the year.

“At times he might play deep forward during a game or might start deep forward, it will depend very much who we play but I think it’s fair to say that the very good sides have got a lot of scoring options so we want to develop Jay Neagle, Scott Lucas, Adam Mcphee and Lloyd and we were planning to include Scott Gumbleton but he has gone down.

“We want to give air-time to a lot of people in our forward half and Matthew really embraced that last week. He played consistent footy for the four quarters and I was proud of him but he understands that’s not going to happen every week but as long as he is going after his role aggressively and leading the troops I am comfortable as a coach.”

Asked whether Lloyd had too much pressure and would be better off without being captain, Knights said it wasn’t something on his mind.

“I rate Lloyd as a fantastic captain and I know that because I am dealing with him on a daily basis and see him operate. He has played great footy being captain so unless he wants to talk to me about it it’s not a topic,” he said.

On other topics Knights said he would prefer the AFL Grand Final to remain a day game because of “tradition” and said Gumbleton would bounce back from his latest injury.

“He is dejected because he wants to play footy but his maturity has grown and he is becoming more resilient and what he is going through will help him long term,” he said.

“He has had his plate put in (on his collar bone) so we will have to rehabilitate that and he will handle it. A lot of players in the first two-three years of their career have injuries and come back and there is no question he will be fine.”