HIGH-FLYING forward Brett Burton will be absent when Adelaide seek to conquer their nemesis, West Coast, this weekend.

Burton (knee) has already been ruled out of Adelaide's side to tackle the reigning premier at AAMI Stadium on Sunday, with influential midfielder Simon Goodwin (knee) also likely to be sidelined.

But the Crows could be strengthened by the return of onballer Brent Reilly (ankle) and forward Ian Perrie (shoulder) as they attempt to remove a proverbial monkey from their backs.

The Crows haven't defeated West Coast since round 22, 2005 - the Eagles prevailing in all five encounters since, including consecutive preliminary finals.

Even in a low-key practice match in Alice Springs this year, the Eagles came from four goals down with a quarter to play to claim victory.

"Of all the teams in the competition, they are probably the only team that has beaten us consistently over the last couple of years," Crows defender Nathan Bassett said.

"They would have some pretty strong self-belief that they can beat us no matter what the game is ... we know they are going to keep coming at us."

Bassett said while many of the defeats to the Eagles had been close, Adelaide would need to be at their best to reverse the trend this weekend despite West Coast losing four of their past six games.

"A lot of them are close games, they are not big results - big as far as on the scoreboard," he said.

"When the games are quite close it's just a few incidents during the game that can make the difference, so we'd expect that our best is good enough to beat anyone.

"We have got to do what we do well for longer and for longer periods of games and not let them get a run on, not let them take control of the game for extended periods where in the past they have outscored us quite heavily for periods of the game."

"We really need to beat them, just for our self-belief that we can and also just because it's such a close competition - we need to win as many games as we can to give ourselves the best possible chance of finishing in the top four."