No cattle, no form and no idea.

That's Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse's bleak summation of his club's predicament following Saturday's 'terrible' 48-point loss to Essendon at the MCG.

For the second week running, the Magpies, it's fair to say, didn't have a single winner on the day.

Defender Harry O'Brien probably shaded his direct opponent, Scott Lucas but, as both coaches pointed out after the contest, Lucas was on one leg, battling the compound effects of ankle, knee and lower back complaints.

Asked if he'd been able to identify the cause of the Pies' drop in form, Malthouse said: "If I could, I would be a genius, and I'm certainly a long way from that."

"Quite frankly, I don't know if we're good enough."

By presiding over the shortest post-match media conference in years - just two minutes and 11 seconds - Malthouse did his best to ensure that his pent-up anger didn't erupt in public.

But after the disappointment of last week's dismal effort against North Melbourne, he was entitled to expect much more of his players against the Bombers than they were able to give.

"We just haven't got the cattle at the moment playing well enough at either end of the ground and, perhaps more importantly, in the middle," Malthouse said.

"Our clearance rate in the middle was good, but there was nothing clean out of it."

The Pies are crying out for the return to fitness and form of Josh Fraser, given the way David Hille single-handedly dispensed with Collingwood's incumbent ruckmen Cameron Wood and Chris Bryan both at the stoppages and, in particular, around the ground on Saturday.

Malthouse said the Magpies were not surprised by the Bombers who, despite their 12th placing on the ladder, are one of the form teams of the competition with just the one loss - to Richmond by four points - in their past six matches.

"It was terrible," he said.

"Essendon was very good and we were very ordinary and the eight goals was very reflective of how they played and how we played."

"We never really got to the stage of putting enough together, we just seemed to give up soft goals and once you give up soft goals momentum shifts and … you're chasing again and you can only chase so many times."

"We just didn't have any answers."