CARLTON has vehemently denied it directed players to have unnecessary surgery in the last weeks of last season, following allegations it used player management to “tank” the final four games.

On Thursday night's Footy Show, former assistant coach Tony Liberatore claimed the Blues sent players such as Bret Thornton, who missed from round 21 onwards after ankle surgery, for season-ending operations when they could have played.

"Bret had ankle surgery and he did need the ankle surgery," senior coach Brett Ratten said on Friday.

"As we said, if any player was under an injury cloud, [we didn't want to] jab them up to try and play three games of football.

"The biggest investment for me as a coach is my players, and going forward I need all the players to have a fit pre-season so they could learn the game plan and learn how we had to play.

"Thank God we put Bret out because he was three weeks longer than expected and started training about two weeks before Christmas. So it would have taken him until after Christmas to get back to training with the group [if we'd waited], and then we'd have a problem."

CEO Greg Swann said midfielder Andrew Walker, who will now miss up to three months with a shoulder injury, was the perfect example of a player who could have been excused from playing late last year, but continued to be named in the side.

"Andrew Walker played with a sore shoulder. We sent him off to a surgeon and the surgeon said he didn't need surgery at that stage, so he played the whole season," Swann said.

"So to suggest we were sending blokes off to have operations who didn't need operations … that's a disgrace to say that.

"The players are what we're here for. The players make a difference for us, so Andrew went through the season with a sore shoulder, he had an operation when he came back because he got knocked on it, and as we saw last weekend, that operation failed and he's in again.

"In a perfect world, if this injury had happened then, this would have been fixed. But at that stage, the doctors said he didn't need an operation so he kept playing.

"The players that did miss were all operated on: Brendan Fevola had six operations at the end of the year, three fingers, two shoulders and a groin, so we can sit here and run through everyone's medical records, but nobody was sent out that didn't need an operation.

"To suggest that is ridiculous."

Ratten also said he had "nothing to hide" from the AFL, and strongly denied the club went into the final rounds of the season with an objective to lose. Swann said the club will consider legal action.