CAMERON ROSE: Now Ryan, I want to discuss a tweet you put up on the weekend.

That's three pyrrhic victories in a row for the Blues. Keep it up lads #AFLPiesBlues

— Ryan Buckland (@RyanBuckland7) May 7, 2016

It struck me as a very unfair reaction to a team that has been kicked like mangy dogs in the last couple of years, and hasn’t had any form of sustained or meaningful success this century. Are you suggesting fans shouldn’t be celebrating wins, and/or that the club should not be chasing them?

RYAN BUCKLAND: Like most of my day time tweets on weekends – before I get the chance to sit down, pad and pen in hand – it was somewhat tongue in cheek. But as some famous guy once said, all comedy has an element of truth.

Long-time readers will know my position on Carlton very well. Coming into this season, I openly questioned whether they should even bother tanking, because their list was such that it probably wouldn’t matter what they did, they’d still be near the top of the draft. But as ever, some teams have had an unexpected fall down the ladder, and as it happens the Blues have performed a little better than expectations.

We’ll get to the nub of why that is during this conversation I’m sure, but suffice to say, if the Blues end up outside of the bottom four this season, it will be no cause for celebration.

ROSE: I’m sure you’ll agree that the mutual ability of new coach Brendon Bolton and the players, firstly to orchestrate a game-plan that is identifiable, and secondly to execute it faithfully, has been a big win for Carlton. Does it not stand to reason that they would then improve and wins would follow?

How could you go about putting the toothpaste of improvement back in the tube? The best way for players to believe is to see results, and the best results are victories. If Carlton were sitting 0-7, perhaps a superstar like Patrick Cripps starts getting itchy feet? This is just a hypothetical given he had signed until the end of 2019 pre-season.

RYAN: Oh yes absolutely, it has been noticeably different. The Blues are conceding three goals and change less than last year, which is a stark improvement – not dissimilar to what Paul Roos was able to engineer at Melbourne in his first year as head coach. Bolton gets 80 per cent of the credit there, for introducing a defensive mechanism that is more in keeping with modern football. The players had to buy into it, too, and they have, and it’s working very well.

They arguably should have won against the Tigers in Round 1, to go with their most recent streak of three victories. That would put them at 4-3 and outside of the top eight on percentage alone. What Bolton has been able to engineer is nothing short of excellent.

That’s fine, and it’ll sell tickets and bring positivity the way of the Blues. But my rankle is more with the playing stocks that are being used. So far this season, the Blues have been the older side in all but two of their games (against Fremantle and Essendon), and on the weekend against Collingwood the Blues went to market with just seven players aged 24 or under. The Pies, by contrast, had 13 players aged 24 or younger.

It seems a mixed strategy: improve tactically, but use the guys that won’t be around to contend for a flag to do it. What do you reckon?

ROSE: If we wind the clock back four years to the corresponding fixture in 2012, Carlton beat Collingwood by 60 points and were installed as premiership favourites off a 3-0 start to the season, coming off a year when they won a final by ten goals and were three points off a preliminary final berth.

Eight players from that game ran out against the Pies on the weekend. In order of age on Saturday, they were Kade Simpson (32), Dennis Armfield (29), Michael Jamison (29), Marc Murphy (28), Bryce Gibbs (27), Zach Tuohy (26), Ed Curnow (26) and Matthew Kruezer (26). The point is that these are quality footballers, and given that I expect Murphy and Gibbs to play well into their 30s, and clubs fortunes can turn around quicker than anyone predicts (for the positive see the Bulldogs, for the negative see Fremantle), five of these guys can be part of the next successful Blues outfit.

Kade Simpson is the heart and soul and must be played. Dennis Armfield and Michael Jamison have only played six games between them as younger men fill their spot, so that transition is already happening too. I guess the problem is that then you add Andrew Walker (29), Dale Thomas (28), Sam Rowe (28), and Andrejs Everitt (27), and there are a lot of players aged 26 plus.

Brendon Bolton is trying to set high standards, and if the younger players aren’t delivering what he wants, should they be gifted games? It hasn’t worked out too well for Gold Coast or Melbourne over the years. Shouldn’t the older players be rewarded on merit if they’re doing what they’re asked? Remember when Ken Hinkley started at Port, he didn’t gut the place, and as he famously said to Kane Cornes, I don’t want end your career, I want to extend it.

RYAN: This is where we might diverge a bit further. If I’m advising Carlton, I’m gunning for a top five pick come rain, hail or shine. There is still so much work to be done to improve this list to get it to a point where it can be sustainably competitive, and finishing much higher than say 14th on the ladder would begin to meaningfully eat into Carlton’s draft equity for this year.

To be clear, I don’t think they should be aiming to lose. But by playing the more mature players with a good game plan, the wins have come and will continue to come, which is in a direct conflict with where the club is otherwise at. The risk would be falling into the trap of assuming they’re not in need of a dramatic overhaul and ploughing on with the current list with minimal changes. That’s how Old Carlton would have done it, let’s see what New Carlton does.

ROSE: I think we might be seeing a scenario similar to St Kilda in 2014, when they were in an almost identical spot – three wins after seven rounds and 12th on the ladder. The Saints were only to win one more game for the year, but it didn’t matter – there was no pressure to get wins, the competitiveness and plan from a new coach was clear for all to see, and it was acknowledged that the list still needed drastic overhaul. I am absolutely certain there is no-one at Carlton thinking that anything but generational change is required for their playing list. But getting into winning habits can’t be a bad thing.

And the thing is, for all we know, getting pick five is better than a couple above that. Look at the 2012 draft – picks 2-4 were Jono O’Rourke, Lachie Plowman and Jimmy Toumpas. 5, 6, and 7 were Jake Stringer, Jackson Macrae and Ollie Wines. I know which trio every one of us would take, and there’s not one of the former that will end up within light years of that latter trio. The best players to come from the 2013 draft will be Marcus Bontempelli at 4 and Carlton’s own Patrick Cripps at 13. I believe that too much is attached to a number. And yes, pick 1 becomes pick 19 and pick 5 becomes pick 23 (not allowing for compensation, et cetera), but after the first round, and maybe early second round, those differences are at the margins.

Say the Blues finish 14th this year, and get pick 5. Can you see an easy way for them to get another top 10 pick that isn’t pie-in-the-sky? Do they consider doing a Melbourne, and bring in a Dom Tyson type (young mid from the expansion sides) and drop down to pick 10 or 12 or something?

RYAN: Having a high draft pick is great when you are targeting specific needs – you know you need a talented inside midfielder, or a player with potential to play in a key position. So you’re right, for Carlton, quantity might outweigh quality, and they might consider looking for a Western Bulldogs-style deal from this year, where the Dogs on-sold their 11th pick and their 2016 third round pick for Carlton’s 20th and 21st pick.

With future pick trading, clubs have the ability to become much more savvy about how they operate in the player market, which, personally, I love to see. The only counter to that is by having the number one pick last year the Blues were able to sort out their full back spot for the next 15 years. It’s often a case of swings and roundabouts.

It’s early on, so the markets for players and picks aren’t really formed yet. Last year the Blues got their cluster of picks, but in doing so lost a lot of those ‘Dom Tyson’ types by design or circumstance – the guys aged 22 to 25 that aren’t ever going to be the best player on your team, but are good enough to be in contention for selection every week. They wouldn’t want to do the same this year I’d have thought, and they don’t have a lot of those players left anyway.

I still reckon the ‘Big Three’ of Matthew Kreuzer, Bryce Gibbs and Marc Murphy have significant value – first-round-pick-plus-a-player type of value – but on revealed preference, they aren’t going anywhere. They’re in a bit of a bind from that perspective. A lot of it will depend on the market for high picks coming into the trade period: what do Richmond and Fremantle do in October, for example. Are there any ‘Dom Tyson’ types that stick out to you from this way out?

ROSE: Dion Prestia is 24 in September, but the Blues would have to pay more than they’d want to in order to secure his signature. And Prestia probably feels he’s done enough of the hard yards and would prefer to come back to Victoria for a club ready to play finals – Melbourne for instance.

But that’s where your point about winning too many games could hurt – if you’ve got pick 1 in the pre-season draft you can drive hard bargains if seeking an out-of-contract player. GWS would be the obvious target, and Jack Steele is in the mould of what we’re talking about. Carlton need multiple players they can build the future around, and unless there is a generational player the Blues have their eye on, I’d be happy to see them drop their first pick back half a dozen places for Jack Steele and maybe another mid-teens pick. Then they could go in with say 10, 16 and 24 or something. With some other deals, they could end up with four top 30 picks, and possibly three in the top 15.

RYAN: Yeah and I think that’s the way they should be looking at this. Winning, say, six or seven games will likely bump them outside of the top five in the draft, which will mean their task of delivering a cluster of top 30-40 picks will be made more challenging. Still, if they rate the depth of this draft, there is always the option of dealing out of 2017 for more picks this year.

So to come full circle, my little pot shot was more about Carlton’s tendency to not see the forest for the trees. Winning is great, and building a winning culture from the smouldering pile of garbage the club’s current keepers inherited is a positive step. But let’s not lose sight of the big picture for this team: the list remains its biggest problem.

ROSE: Given Carlton’s Lygon St connection, I’ll go with an Italian analogy – I think we’re going see the Blues continue to find as much spaghetti as they can to throw at the wall, and hope they get a high percentage to stick. But I’m pleased to see them chasing wins along the way.