Collingwood skipper Scott Pendlebury has drawn the battle lines early, saying the Magpies are ready to “attack” West Coast in Saturday night’s cut-throat elimination final.

Pendlebury and the Magpies start as underdogs in the blockbuster final at Optus Stadium, where the Eagles have not lost in 2020.

Last time the two teams met, West Coast thumped their 2018 grand final opponents to the tune of 66 points in Perth, but Pendlebury did not play after being withdrawn late after sustaining an injury in the warm-up.

Collingwood won just five of their past nine games since, slipping to eighth with just nine wins from 17 games.

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Pendlebury though was as confident as ever that the Magpies could claim the 2020 premiership despite Collingwood having the worst record of any top-eight team.

“This season has been completely different. I don’t think we’re an eighth-placed side in terms of the quality we can deliver, it's just the way the schedule falls,” Pendlebury told AFL 360.

“Whether you’ve got more days rest than the opposition or whatnot, and we’ve had a pretty tough schedule in last six to eight weeks in terms of days’ breaks.

“We come into this game fresh, looking forward to attacking West Coast.

“Hopefully we can get past them and we’re really confident that our best football stacks up. We’ve got some good finals experience, we’re not going to be overawed by the occasion and we’re looking forward to meeting them head-on.”

Pendlebury labelled Collingwood’s round eight disastrous loss to the Eagles as an “outlier” and said it was a result of “tweaks that didn’t work” to their gameplan.

“We were on fire early and then we couldn’t do anything right and they couldn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

“We haven’t revisited those (tweaks) since, so looking forward to playing. West Coast won’t be expecting the same night that they had... I don’t think we expect to deliver what we did that day.

“I think it’s going to be like it has been traditionally with us two. I think that game’s a bit of an outlier. It’s going to be a cracking final, it's going to be close, we know that and we’re looking forward to the scrap.”

Pendlebury, 32, is a veteran when it comes to finals with 23 under his belt including four grand finals, so he knows what it takes on the big stage and that is scoreboard pressure.

“Kicking straight, scoreboard pressure in finals is just so big, so important,” he said.

“If you get a run on, got that momentum and you can capitalise with straight goalkicking and unselfish play, it really does demoralise the opposition.”