SATURDAY'S clash with Richmond kicks off an important month for Carlton and assistant coach Brett Montgomery expects a fired-up Tigers unit to run out onto the MCG.

The Blues' 83-point round one drubbing sent the Punt Road club into a downward spiral that doomed its season and Montgomery said his players must be prepared for a hot start to the match.

"Certainly that will be touched on. How would we respond? What response would we like to see [if we had been beaten like that]?" he mused from Visy Park on Friday morning.

"We're not taking them lightly at all. We're paying them the respect that we need to. [But] other than the mindset of how they would be feeling, we haven't taken too much else out of round one.

"There's a new coach, close to a dozen new players in the side ... so we'll just take them on face value over their last two or three weeks."

Montgomery agreed the next run of four fixtures which sees the Blues tackle the Sydney Swans, Collingwood and the Kangaroos after the Tigers could prove pivotal to the club's finals aspirations.

He also agreed Saturday's clash against the Tigers was a game Carlton could not afford to lose, but added the coaching staff would not be emphasising that point to the players.   

"We don't talk about what they can't do; we certainly talk to them about what they can do and what we can do when we're doing the things that we like them to do," he said.

"We certainly need to get our form up where it needs to be consistency-wise at least.

"If we're to have any sort of decent crack come September then, especially this next month, we need to start stringing something together. That may not be win, win, win, but we need to get some real consistent form."

Montgomery said the group had taken plenty out of the come-from-behind win over Fremantle at Subiaco last week with the positives outweighing a poor first quarter.

"We don't gloss over anything [in our reviews]," he said.

"We certainly let the guys know where we went wrong and that it was unacceptable, but we certainly didn't harp on it because we did see so many things that we liked [later on]."