It is hard not to agree with the boys from AFL 360 on Wednesday night as they assessed the chances of the Western Bulldogs in 2011.

After their loss to St Kilda last year - their third straight defeat in a preliminary final - the critics couldn't jump off the Bulldogs quickly enough.

Yet a look at the various pre-season prognostications published over the last week has the Dogs very much in the frame as one of the main challengers to Collingwood.

There are reasons to be bullish - pardon the pun - about the Dogs this year. They were badly hobbled in last year's finals with their best player Adam Cooney absent through injury and both Dale Morris and Shaun Higgins well below full fitness. The track watchers at the Whitten Oval will tell you that Higgins is really flying so far this year.

Then there are the retirements. Jason Akermanis was packed up during the season, while Brad Johnson drew the curtain on his brilliant career, while the damaging Nathan Eagleton also called it stumps. Perhaps the biggest loss of all was running defender Jarrod Harbrow, who joined Gold Coast.

Big losses the four of them, but none were major contributors in last year's finals. The retirements allowed the Bulldogs to trade aggressively and Justin Sherman (Brisbane) and Patrick Veszpremi (Sydney) would appear to be walk-up starts, as would Nathan Djerkurra, formerly of Geelong.

The Dogs already look stronger on paper with those additions and they look more exciting with Northern Territory excitement machine Zeph Skinner and father-son selections Tom Liberatore and Mitch Wallis also the frame for selection from round one.

Look for further improvement from Easton Wood (who should slot nicely into Harbrow's position), Callan Ward and Jordan Roughead, while 2011 shapes as the year Ryan Griffen becomes a top-10 AFL player. At his best when gliding through the midfield, few players are more watchable.

Matthew Boyd steps in as skipper to replace Johnson and will bring his famed work ethic to the role. With Daniel Cross, Griffen and Cooney, the Dogs have a great midfield, one of the best in the competition.

They rolled the dice with Barry Hall and it worked a treat last year, with the former Saint and Swan booting 80 goals and looking really settled. But he is now 34 and the Bulldogs will need to find other scoring options.

At the other end of the ground there are some concerns. Full-back Brian Lake has had an interrupted pre-season while Ryan Hargrave is now on the long-term injury list and won't see any action for a couple of months.

The last year of Rodney Eade's coaching contract adds further urgency to the Western Bulldogs. It is hard to get a clear picture from David Smorgon as to what Eade needs to do to get a new contract. After saying recently only a Grand Final berth would suffice, he appeared to back track at a function earlier this week.

Smorgon knows the Bulldogs' best will almost be good enough. Some luck in the medical room and the Dogs will again feature at the pointy end of the season. And if you contend for long enough, as Geelong showed a few years back, you eventually break through.

That's the hope for the Western Bulldogs in 2011. We have them in third place.

The story so far

4. St Kilda

5. Geelong

6. Adelaide

7. Sydney

8. Fremantle

9. Carlton

10. Essendon

11. Melbourne

12. North Melbourne

13. West Coast

14. Richmond

15. Gold Coast

16. Port Adelaide

17. Brisbane Lions