Essendon have drafted club stalwart Scott Lucas onto a panel to select a replacement for their dumped coach Matthew Knights.

Lucas, who retired at the end of last season, will join chief executive Ian Robson and football manager Paul Hamilton on the panel.

Hamilton said the club would not be rushed into making a decision before next month's trade week, although it would prefer to have someone in place by then.

"We're looking for the best available candidate to coach the Essendon Football club (but) the second point is we won't be rushed in making that decision," Hamilton said.

"If we try to do it in two or three weeks we may not get the right candidate, we may not get the whole process right.

"We haven't set a deadline, we don't want to handicap ourselves in that way. We have a preference that we'd like to have a coach before trade week but it's not a necessity."

Hamilton said the club was open-minded about a coach and would look at candidates with experience at senior level and new faces.

He hinted the right candidate would be versed in Essendon's past and present situation but no decision has been made on the length of contract to be offered.

"We're open-minded with that at the moment. We haven't got to the stage where we've made any decision.

"Our first step is to find the best available person - someone who has a good handle of our past and what our current situation is and someone we believe can lead us and drive us to a successful future.

"The key thing here is we're looking to the future, to find what makes up the best credentials.

"One thing we are doing and will continue to do is to review our football department as it currently stands and what's happened over the course of this year.

"Part of that is you come up with some clear areas where you need to improve and the type of person, the coach we need, to lead us through the future," Hamilton said.

"We've had a number of people approach us (but) we haven't begun any discussions at this stage with anyone.

"We've had a lot of people contact us and we will start talking to those people over the course of the next week."

Hamilton said he expected Lucas' input would be vital.

"He's been a wonderful player for the Essendon Football Club. We were keen to get a recently retired player.

"He's a premiership player, he's a best and fairest winner, we know he's got a very sharp and good football brain and we felt he'd be very good to help lead our selection panel," he said.

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