Carlton fell under scrutiny during the week after losing four of its last five games to be in danger of falling from the eight. That looked likely with a 26-point deficit to bottom-placed West Coast at half time, but an 11-goal-to-three second half quickly turned that around as the Blues won by 26 points.
"Everyone keeps telling us how bad we're going and if you listen to what was going on outside our football club you would think we were in the bottom four. If we keep telling the players that too and they keep listening to it, then they will believe it," Ratten said.
"From a positive point of view, we need to tell them what they are doing well and give them the solution to fix what they aren’t (doing well). The mental approach of the group to be a man down and stick it out and grind out the win was fantastic for us."
The sour note was a neck injury to Dennis Armfield from a bump courtesy of Ashton Hams. Despite reports of Armfield suffering a compressed vertebrae, Ratten is hopeful it's not too bad.
"Dennis just has a little bit of pain in the neck and shoulder area so by precaution the doc's tried to look after him to make sure everything is spot on there," he said.
"He's gone to X-rays and scans there to make sure everything is all right. We made sure we did everything to make sure he's spot on for next week or going forward."
Ratten is confident his team will take plenty of heart out of the performance leading into next Saturday's blockbuster with Collingwood at the MCG.
"It's more about our confidence. We had a bit of that in the last three quarters against Sydney and the second quarter got away this week, but in the other three quarters we made it a fight," he said.
"There's five big games for us, there's no one big game. This was a start for us to get some confidence and get back on track so it was pleasing, but we have a big five weeks of footy in front of us. They are on top and we are sitting at eighth so it will be a great challenge for us."
