After watching another blow to his side's finals hopes with a 26-10 defeat by Penrith on Friday night, Wests Tigers coach Tim Sheens admitted the NRL top eight was not on his mind.

That's probably just as well, because after five straight losses it's the other end of the table that the Tigers should probably start turning their attention to.

The Tigers are in a rut, and when a team plays with the flair that this mob do when they are on song, it's not a pretty sight when the notes get muddled up.

The Tigers played with purpose and made plenty of metres all over the park to put themselves in dangerous positions against the Panthers.

But poor execution undid them, with the last pass hitting the ground as the team pushed for one magic touch too many.

When they did get it to click they would switch off at the other end, never more clearly than when they surrendered an early 4-0 lead over the Panthers with a soft try from dummy-half to Penrith hooker Paul Aiton.

"Your brain goes dead when you shoot yourself in the foot and that's what we did," Tigers coach Tim Sheens said.

"We've been gifting sides games for the last month with a dumb play or a soft try like the one there in the first half under the posts."

Asked where the defeat had left his side, Sheens said:

"We're not thinking about the eight at the moment, what we're thinking about is next week.

"We've got a long week to think about it but also a long week to recover and get ourselves in some sort of shape."

While the prospect of victory would seem strong against a struggling Parramatta side next week, the Tigers know they will need to do a whole lot more to win the games against high-flyers Melbourne and St George Illawarra that follow.

Their chances haven't been helped by a hand injury to English import Gareth Ellis, who is expected to be sidelined for another three weeks.

Brought to you by AAP © 2024 AAP