Adelaide’s football director Mark Ricciuto says he’ll stand down if an external review finds he’s a cause of the AFL club’s problems.

And Ricciuto suggests coach Don Pyke would do likewise.

“I’m not saying I expect someone to get sacked but if findings are that that is the case, then you have got to go,” Ricciuto told Triple M radio on Tuesday.

“I know what Pykey is like, he’s an absolute A-grade person. And I would like to think I’m an honest and fair person as well.

“If I found I was the problem, I would step down immediately; would not even think twice about it.”

Pyke is contracted until the end of the 2021 season.

The Crows have drafted a sports psychologist and a high-performance expert to be on a four-member external panel to review all club operations.

An internal review will also be held after the Crows missed the finals in consecutive years after being beaten grand finalists in 2017.

“Obviously it’s probably a bit of a nervous time for people,” Ricciuto said.

“The supporters and members … are incredibly frustrated at the moment and quite rightly so.

“But everyone involved internally at the football club is equally as frustrated about the performance of the last couple of years.

“It is a little bit unusual for a club to do an external review … (but) everyone at the footy club is disappointed with where they’re at and are happy to open it up to an outside set of eyes.”

Ricciuto has apologised for saying on Sunday that Crows members and supporters should back the club’s decision makers “and if they don’t, well then maybe they don’t need to barrack for the footy club”.

On Tuesday, he said: “I put my foot in my mouth and I have got to pay the price … I have got to live with that and fix it.”

Ricciuto, a former Crows captain and the club’s sole Brownlow medallist, was still seeking answers to Adelaide’s slide.

“I’m in the footy department and the footy department hasn’t worked well,” he said.

“So we will come up with our conclusions internally about what we have done wrong and then we will just see what happens from the outside.”

“Hopefully they marry up, that is the ideal world where you know what your weaknesses are, you know where you have made mistakes and you know where you have got to improve and then you make those changes accordingly.

“If they are not lined up, well then that is the benefit of doing an external review because then you’re finding out things that you didn’t know and that is when there is an issue.”