After a 69-point defeat to Essendon last week the Blues are expected to ring the changes, with Bret Thornton the only definite inclusion after he was a late withdrawal against the Bombers.
"Thornton will come back for sure," Ratten said.
"If that was maybe a Saturday game he probably would have got up: just that risk factor; we thought Essendon is a quick team and he would have had to work fairly hard, which he does anyway. It could be up to three or four changes depending on how it all pans out.
Brendan Fevola was widely criticised for allowing Essendon backman Tayte Pears to run off him but Ratten said he was not solely to blame for a lack of defensive pressure.
"I thought there was a bit of self-survival for a lot. Not too much supporting your teammate," he said.
"I thought Brendan was a part of it, but there were other players who didn't assist teammates as well."
Fevola underwent minor finger surgery over the weekend and did not train on Tuesday. He will be assessed later in the week.
Ratten would not identify which players maybe dropped from the team.
"We've got match committee on Thursday morning. We've got a little bit of think time but when you have a performance like we did, all positions are up for review and debate and no one is safe," he said.
Ratten said the temptation was there to flog his team on the track this week but with a trip to Perth to play Fremantle, he said he was conscious of not giving his players too big a workload.
"It is a big one. How hard do you go? How much confidence do you lose from that?
"Really, that is an unacceptable performance. The reality is ... what [they] produced is unacceptable and we had too many blokes in that boat," he said.
"We have got to look at our loads and where we sit with that from a high performance area. We have to weigh all that up. If we do whack them what consequences do we get by going interstate and trying to run over the top of the ground. We need to be mindful of that."
