Voss said his players had lost their run out of defence in the last two weeks, and needed to regain their spark for Saturday night’s clash with an in-form Fremantle at the Gabba.
“We’ve looked slow,” Voss said.
“Our ball flow just hasn’t got going; we’ve been ultra-conservative in the way we’ve wanted to move the ball.
“We’re actually making more mistakes because we’re trying to play safe, so we’ve got to open the shoulders up a little bit and be prepared to take a few more risks.”
Voss said the pressure applied by Melbourne and the Swans in the past two weeks had proved too much for the Lions players, who were on a high after starting the season with four wins on the trot.
“Sides have certainly put the clampers on us, and we’ve got to be good enough to be able to get through that,” Voss said.
“It just hasn’t been our defenders, I think our midfielders have been the same.
“We’ve been comprehensively beaten in that area the last two weeks. We need to lift our standards in that area, otherwise the Fremantle team that we face this weekend is going to have a nice little merry dance around us.”
Voss said Jed Adcock (quad) and Justin Sherman (thigh) will be in the running for a recall to the senior team, and he's confident that Joel Patfull (hamstring) will take his place in the side. Mitch Clark, who cramped late in Saturday night's game, will be fit to play.
Full-back Daniel Merrett is an unlikely starter as he battles to recover from a hamstring strain.
“He’s still got a long way to go.” Voss said of Merrett.
“We are treating it as another week; we thought it would be two weeks, so he would have to make some ground pretty quick for us to change our mind.”
Voss said the priority now was putting 22 healthy players on the field. The Lions have only finished one game this season with a full quota of fit players on the interchange bench.
While Brendan Fevola was seen limping after Saturday night’s game, Voss said it’s nothing to worry about.
“He has just bruised his heel,” Voss said.
“When he puts his foot down it just doesn’t respond that well after a game, so that’s the only reason why he is limping around.”
Fevola (21 goals) and Jonathan Brown (24 goals) both feature in the AFL's top four goalkickers for the season, but Voss said he didn't feel that the Lions were too reliant on the powerful pair to kick a winning score.
“We’ve got two leading goal kickers in the top 10,” Voss said.
“There’s no other team in the competition that has that, so I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
Voss said Brent Staker is likely to get a defensive role on Matthew Pavlich after doing a good job on Adam Goodes last Saturday night.
“He (Pavlich) is most dangerous when he’s forward, but he’s been able to kick those running goals too out of the centre square,” Voss said.
“Whoever gets that match-up is certainly going to have a task.”
