Should Adelaide play to their best against West Coast on Saturday they will leave AAMI Stadium with four premiership points and a slim chance of an AFL top-four finish.

Trouble is, the Crows have very seldom managed to do that against the Eagles over the past five years.

Adelaide have lost eight of 10 matches against West Coast, a statistic that sticks uneasily in coach Neil Craig's throat each time he says it.

Several of those games were against the mighty sides led by Ben Cousins, Chris Judd and Daniel Kerr in 2005 and 2006, but there have also been days when the Crows have played themselves out of contention against far slighter opposition.

Two rounds out from the finals and with fourth spot still a possibility, Adelaide can ill-afford another mental blank against the team coached by John Worsfold.

"We need to change that record and it's still relevant for us now because we dont want eight from 10," Craig said on Friday.

"We're really keen to win not only because of that (record) but because of what the win means for us as a club.

"There are still two games to go in the minor rounds and two really important games for us to finish as high as we can and we're still a chance to get the second chance (top four).

"When you put those two things together it's a really relevant game for us."

The Crows' most recent loss to the Eagles, by 50 points in round nine, was so abject as to be almost unrecognisable from Adelaide's usual air of discipline and commitment.

"We want to be able to walk off the ground tomorrow afternoon and say we've played some really attacking, hard-nosed footy and it was good enough or it wasn't good enough but we're still pretty happy with the way we've played," Craig said.

"There's been a lot of times against West Cost where we've come off the ground and said `we don't like the way we've played'.

"The game last year over in Perth, irrespective of the scoreboard we came off that day saying `that's not the way' we didn't give ourselves a chance, so we don't want to be like that."

Adelaide's match committee have isolated three areas in which the Crows must lift in order to keep pace with the league's top sides, having beaten only one top four team this year - Collingwood in round one.

"I'm not going to tell you what they (the three areas) are, but they'll be important to get the result we want over the next two weeks plus they'll be important in finals footy," Craig said.

"We've played the top three sides and Hawthorn being the reigning premier.

"We've learned some really valuable lessons from it (the past six weeks), but our responsibility now is to see whether we can actually put those lessons into place."

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