Parramatta coach Brad Arthur has turned the blowtorch on his slumping NRL outfit after they were handed a seven-try whooping by Cronulla.

Arthur was livid with the lack of resilience shown by his men following the loss of skipper Clint Gutherson to concussion in just the fourth minute on Saturday night.

And while they managed to add some respectability to the scoreline late, it wasn’t enough to stop Arthur from laying into his team post-match.

“It’s not great losing a fullback and having to play (David Gower) at six and move Will (Smith) around,” Arthur said.

“But we’ve got to decide whether we want to be a full-time or a part-time team. Full-time is all the time, every week.”

The defeat was the Eels fourth defeat in their past five games, resulting in the club dropping out of the top eight for the first time this year.

Arthur said his team needed to show more backbone when faced with adversity.

“We’re training well, we’re preparing well,” Arthur said.

“(But) when things don’t go quite our way, we need to harden up there. Things don’t go our way, like Gutho went down, it didn’t go our way, it doesn’t matter.

“We’ve just got to keep going.”

He again threatened to make changes, having already wielded the axe last week that prompted a bounceback effort against a depleted South Sydney team.

“I don’t want to have to keep making changes every week because that doesn’t help anyone. That doesn’t give you any continuity or combinations,” he said.

“I’m sick of talking about it. I’m not going to make any decision tonight on if I’m going to make changes, but there needs to be a real change to our approach.”

The only positive was the successful return of forward Nathan Brown, who made his first appearance since tearing his pectoral in round one.

He finished with 133 metres and 24 tackles in 44 minutes.

“I ran the gauntlet too with him. We hadn’t planned on giving him as much game time that’s why I took him off at the end,” Arthur said.

“So I was more concerned about him individually and long-term, but he come on and tried to spark us. He hasn’t done a lot with the team, probably three sessions.

“If we have the right attitude, we’ll give him a chance to show us what he’s got.”