Essendon­ is being hurt by its need for speed.

The Bombers burst back on the scene last season on the back of rapid ball movement, playing on at all cost with leg speed to burn.

But now coach John Worsfold wants his players to slow it down.

Not all the time, but when they need to.

Worsfold pinpointed the failure to hold the ball up and give tall forwards Joe Daniher and Cale Hooker time to get into position in their forward 50m arc as crucial to the Bombers' 16-point loss to Fremantle at Optus Stadium on Saturday night.

"The message to the players was that if we go that fast every time, Fremantle always have a couple of players back," Worsfold said.

"They don't follow their men up and if we don't give our forwards time to get back and set up we're kicking into an extra number, at least one. That's just players learning.

"Conor McKenna takes off every time even when the message is out that we've got loose numbers around the ball, let's use them and let the forwards get back.

"So it's about us just maturing as a group."

On an exciting night for football in WA, Fremantle came out firing, booting the first goal through Matt Taberner within 20 seconds and adding another via David Mundy after a clanger dropped mark by Michael Hurley.

From then on it was 14 goals apiece but Worsfold was far from satisfied.

"Overall, I thought we didn't use the ball very well or play very well in terms of when we won the footy we didn't make good decisions, weren't clean around the ball and we dropped marks we should have been creating off and (it) put us under pressure," Worsfold said.

"They were probably the key areas."

Another issue was the lack of impact from high-profile recruit Jake Stringer, who was held to just nine possessions and failed to hit the scoreboard.

"They (recruits Stringer, Adam Saad and Devon Smith) are fitting in really well but they are raw and new to what we are asking them to do," Worsfold said.

"There's a fair bit of work to do with their roles, probably more Stringer. We've got to work on where he is going to add the most value to us.

"We are not going to work that out in one or two games, it's going to be ongoing throughout the course of this year, weighing up what our best structure of our team looks like with the personnel we've got."

Key forward Daniher also failed to kick a goal while Hooker booted just the one. However, Worsfold wasn't harsh on them post-match.

"We still didn't give them enough of a chance, I don't think, with those turnovers. We were out and ready to go but coughed the ball up," he said.

"We were going too fast, we weren't letting our forwards off and get back and get set back inside our forward line.

"So there was some real decision-making around parts of the game that went too fast and didn't let Hooker and Daniher be in enough contests inside 50."

The Bombers play the Western Bulldogs next Sunday at Etihad Stadium. Worsfold said there were no injuries from Saturday night's match.