It's not the mental, it's the fundamentals that are letting down slumping Melbourne, according to new coach Todd Viney.

The Demons were given a 76-point hammering by Carlton at the MCG on Saturday to start Viney's AFL coaching career in less than a blaze of glory.

When asked how he found his first match-day as a senior coach after stepping up to replace sacked Dean Bailey, Viney joked: "I presume it gets easier."

Unfortunately, for a Demons side - big on effort but short on quality - as Carlton rampaged to a 21.8 (134) to 7.16 (58) victory, Viney faces a massive task to turn around a team seemingly bereft of confidence and capable of going missing in matches far too easily.

Carlton destroyed the Dees in the second term, booting eight goals to none and taking control of the match with minimum fuss.

Former Demons great and the club's new football director Garry Lyon lamented Melbourne's lack of confidence while commentating on the match for Triple M radio.

"They are shot in terms of confidence ... the resistance and resilience seeped out of them," Lyon said of a side coming off a 186-point loss to Geelong the previous week and losing their past five matches by an average of 94 points.

"That's the challenge for Todd Viney and the rest of the group - to instil some of that confidence."

But Viney believes the right recipe is getting the football fundamentals right to improve the players' mental state.

"I don't think losing by 76 points helps your confidence, but I'm going to keep dragging it back to 'get the fundamentals right'," Viney said.

"When we get challenged in the second quarter and things start to go pear-shaped, all year we haven't been able to slow teams up, to stem the bleeding and regain some sort of momentum.

"That comes down to some of the fundamentals that we'll be working on over the next five weeks, and one of those is contested possession. If you control the 50-50 contest, you control the game.

"It was never going to turn around in one game, and we've got plenty of work to do in that area."

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