MELBOURNE'S woeful start to the year has put its football and coaching departments under extraordinary pressure but president Don McLardy said the club has trust in them to get the on-field performance right.

Key club officials held meetings immediately after the 148-point loss to Essendon on Saturday night and spoke again on Sunday morning. The group resolved to stick with the plan it embarked on 18 months ago and back the people it employed to turn the on-field performance around.

McLardy said the two performances so far were "completely unacceptable" but the club had employed Mark Neeld, director of sports performance Neil Craig and elite performance manager David Misson to turn things around, and he trusted them to get it right.

"We knew it was going to be tough and we're not going to waver now," McLardy told AFL.com.au.

However, he admitted that such a performance was unexpected and tough questions were going to be asked of those in charge.

"We'll be challenging all aspects of what we do and there will be some tough internal conversations but we will be sticking together and we're going to work our way through it," McLardy said.

Supporters are angry and are expressing their frustration and McLardy said he understood there was going to be a lot of pressure coming from outside parties to make all sorts of decisions but he believed the only way to make gains was to see the plan through.

"We've seen what has happened in the past when we go on the wrong path," McLardy said. "The key here is stability. You have got to stand up under pressure."

He dismissed suggestions that CEO Cameron Schwab and the administration would be under pressure as a result of the performance. He said the future of Schwab – who signed a new contract last season – was not even a consideration.

"We believe that our club administration has done extremely well under extraordinary circumstances," McLardy said.

"What we need now is on-field performance."

Neeld has embarked on a significant cultural change at the club that has been anchored at the bottom for seven seasons.

He chose a young leadership group last season and brought in recycled players who had been at successful clubs in order to teach a core group of talented young players what was required to win consistently at AFL level.

However the results have been worse than expected and the turnaround time is frustrating supporters.

Last night's loss was Melbourne's biggest defeat against Essendon and its worst ever at the MCG.