BRENDAN Fevola's departure left a huge hole in Carlton's forward line and skipper Chris Judd has warned Blues fans not to expect one player to rise up and become the next Fev.

Rather than spending the summer scouring the playing group for potential Coleman Medallists, Judd says the club has taken a big-picture approach that he's confident will bear fruit.

"We're not out there trying to make a new Brendan; we're trying to make a new forward-line structure altogether," Judd says.

"It can't be denied that Fev was a great player for the club, but I think now we have a much more unpredictable forward line that we can tinker with to suit the various circumstances that we'll be faced with.

"I don't think we're going to have anyone who is going to kick 90 goals, [but] I don't think there's going to be someone in our side who we're going to kick to once every two times we go forward [either]. That's going to really change the way our forward line looks.

"I think there will be a lot more times during the year when we have no one in the forward 50 and have players running toward our goal getting the ball over the top and things like that which we haven't experimented with because we did have Brendan coming out of the goal square."

Judd's assertions have been borne out during the club's pre-season campaign, which has seen the team trying to be more patient with the ball than it has been previously under Brett Ratten.

While that has worked to varying degrees, Judd says the playing group has no reservations about adopting the new style of play with four premiership points on the line.

"Now we get a chance to really show how far we've come and that the group and the forward line is capable of working without Fev," he says.

"There's been a lot of doom and gloom around the footy club, but essentially from our point of view, it's an exciting time.

"I think the expectation from the playing group is to improve on what we did last year. We haven't sat down as a group and said that we want to finish [in position] X, Y or Z, largely because it's not the most productive way to spend your time, but we want to improve and we expect to play finals.

"I think it's going to be exciting to see how young players are going to stand up.

"We're not going into the season not expecting our forward line to produce - we're excited about what's going to happen."