St Kilda coach Ross Lyon admits Monday night's AFL loss to Carlton has presented a major challenge to his team.

The Blues won by 61 points and it was St Kilda's biggest losing margin in four years.

Carlton dismantled St Kilda's disciplined playing style and Lyon said there had been a thorough review in the last couple of days.

"It's a real test for our group ... we've been challenged like we haven't been challenged for a while," he said.

"We've always been challenged, but we've been able to overcome them, we haven't been able to get over the challenges in front of us, so it's really sharpened our mindset and our focus.

"We can talk about win-loss over the last year and a half ... but all that is history, it's really irrelevant."

Lyon said he'll try to resist tinkering with their Riewoldt-less attack for Sunday's clash with Essendon.

Lyon said it was probably time to give their forward structure more stability.

The Saints lost ruckman Steven King with a hamstring injury and also dropped Jack Steven from a squad of 25.

"There are a few under pressure - it's been easy, match committee, for a while now, you just slot them up and away you go," Lyon said.

"We're reluctant to break down our back six and midfield, but we've been doing that a little bit, so we just might go the other way a little bit.

"(We might) pick a forward structure, they're our forwards, we'll back our `mids' and defence to get it done, rather than pulling the team apart on game day, (which) we've been doing a little bit.

"We've been robbing Peter to pay Paul a little bit - philosophically, we're just going to change a little bit."

He also contended that despite the overall poor performance against Carlton, their forward set-up had shown some improvement.

Lyon again called for the Saints to show more overall effort and force scores from turnovers.

"We don't shy away from the fact we'd like to score more, but it's a bit like team defence - it's team attack," he said.

"If you're not moving it well out of the backline or you're not pressuring and causing turnovers, certainly we'd all recognise our pressure has been down a little bit.

"Two out of three ... goals are caused from a turnover, get it back from the opposition and go quickly.

"So if you're just sheep-dogging and not getting it back off them, it's hard to score and score quickly."

Lyon was upbeat in the wake of the Monday night shocker, saying there had been a review, but adding with a grin "certainly the world is round still".

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