Adelaide must attack Port Adelaide in waves from midfield to cover for the loss of forward targets Brett Burton and Jason Porplyzia.

So says young centreman Chris Knights, who will enter Sunday's AFL showdown on a high after playing the best game of his fledgling career against Collingwood last week.

Knights, Scott Thompson, Nathan van Berlo and others will be needed to kick goals from the midfield to ease the pressure on a forward line that will be experimental at best.

Nick Gill and Luke Jericho appear the frontrunners for recalls, though SANFL club Norwood's in-form full-forward Taylor Walker, 18, will also tempt Adelaide's selectors.

Whoever is picked will be relying on strong support from the middle to build a winning score against the Power.

"It's weight of numbers, there's going to be 18 people on the field and we're going to have a few coming in from the SANFL who can step up and fill those roles," Knights said.

"I think it presents a bigger challenge for the midfield too, that we do have to contribute on the scoreboard as well as getting it in there more effectively."

Knights emphasised the power of positive thinking at a time when many pundits are tipping sixth-placed Adelaide to slide out of the top eight sooner rather than later.

"There's always going to be critics out there and probably fair enough because we haven't really performed in the last four weeks probably where we'd like to be," he said.

"I don't think we're more vulnerable, I think there is a lot of people in our situation, there's a few teams that are quite ahead of the rest but there's a group of us fighting for the positions in the eight and we know we've got a really good squad and are excited by the challenge ahead.

"We've just made sure we're gelled together, we've continued to be unified as a group because in times of adversity you don't want your team to start splitting apart and getting frustrated at one another."

Power tagger, Dom Cassisi, meanwhile, distanced himself from talk that Port would focus as much on the man as the ball on Sunday.

"We want to focus on the footy for sure, we can't afford to give away silly free kicks for going at the man and every team's focus is to attack the footy hard," he said.

"We're going to go out there and go flat out for sure, the Crows will be doing the same.

"Our tackling and hard ball gets were up (against North Melbourne) and we want to continue to do that, that means hitting the ball hard and being hard at it."

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