CARLTON coach Brett Ratten has played down trade speculation linking West Coast playmaker Daniel Kerr with the Blues.

The coach forecast an open-minded approach to this year's trading period, but said the situation with regard to Kerr was pretty straightforward at the moment.

"Daniel's in contract but everyone seems to be pointing the bone at us with [him]," Ratten said on Wednesday. "I think he's a fantastic player and he's 24-25 years of age, but he's under contract to the West Coast Eagles.

"He's a contracted player and I daresay he'll probably finish his career at West Coast, but I do like watching Daniel play, probably like 15 other coaches in the AFL."

However, Ratten did not rule out making a play for Kerr or any other player if they were put on the market, adding his club was in a healthy salary cap situation.

"If West Coast said he was available, or someone else from their club was available, we'd sit down and have a look, see what they wanted and go from there," he said.

"We've got a little bit of room in our cap. We are fairly healthy in that regard, so we have got some room to maybe chase a player from another team.

"We're pretty open to most things. We've got an idea of our deficiencies and a pretty good idea of where we need to improve, so we'd be pretty open to whatever was put on the table."