The sacking of a Blues coach mid-season is hardly new territory for this tempestuous football club. But the aftermath of Mick Malthouse's removal on Tuesday also has some eerie parallels in Carlton history.

If there is a sense of déjà vu on Friday night when the Blues – their backs to the wall and a new man sitting in the coach's box – run onto the SCG to take on Sydney, that is because, as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young put it: "We have all been here before."

Well, some of us. The year was 1989, and just as they do this week, the Blues headed up to Sydney days after removing their coach following a shocking start to the season.

Carlton had won the flag under Robert Walls in 1987 and reached a preliminary final the following year, but after being infamously defeated at Princes Park by the battling Brisbane Bears thanks to a goal on the siren from Warwick Capper, they sat second-last on the ladder with two wins and eight losses.

Having at that stage still never won a wooden spoon, Carlton were not about to flirt with such ignominy. And so began a day of long knives, Walls unceremoniously dumped and a favourite son in Alex Jesaulenko summoned back to the club on an SOS mission.

Jezza had acrimoniously parted ways with the Blues in 1979 after a board upheaval only months after captain-coaching them to a premiership.

He had then coached St Kilda for three seasons, but had been away from the scene for six years, living in Canberra, when the call came.

John Barker, 26 years on, has witnessed Carlton's ritual capitulations of late from much closer quarters, next to his predecessor in the coach's box. But the message for the sudden replacement coach remains, by necessity, fairly simple.

Jesaulenko held his first press conference as the Blues' new coach out on the Princes Park turf after training.

"I don't think it will take too long to get back into the scene," he said. "The technique might have changed a bit but the basics are still the same. We'll play basic football at Carlton from now on."

Barker on Thursday performed his first public duty as Carlton senior coach at Melbourne Airport before the Blues headed to Sydney, but the words were not all that different.

"We know there's been some issues with our effort and we know it's one of the core components of footy, so really just to drive some spirit and some energy back into the place ... that'll be the main message," Barker said. "We need to keep the messages simple, I know that."

Barker might want to keep his own spirits up by avoiding looking at how recent mid-season coaching replacements have gone.

Malthouse's sacking was the 24th mid-season removal or resignation of an AFL coach since that controversial dismissal of Walls in 1989. In fact, last year was the first time since 2008 that every senior coach had managed to see out the season.

And while a couple of replacements have managed to produce an immediate spike in performance, the story overall has remained pretty grim.

There have been eight such cases since 2009. A few – Jade Rawlings after taking over from Terry Wallace at Richmond, Paul Williams, replacing Rodney Eade at the Western Bulldogs and Mark Bickley when he took over Adelaide from Neil Craig – have even managed first-up wins.

But the overall scoreline for those eight thrust into the hot seat stands at 21 wins, 45 losses and three draws, evidence enough that when bad teams go even worse, it is not just the old coach's fault.

On Friday night Barker will be hoping the parallels with Carlton in 1989 extend to the game itself.

The 1989 version of Sydney-Carlton produced a famous first-up victory under Jesaulenko, the Blues managing to win after a spiteful clash in which David Rhys-Jones had his jaw broken by, of all people, Greg Williams, who would later go from Sydney villain to Carlton hero.

Without Chris Judd, Bryce Gibbs, Michael Jamison and Matthew Kreuzer, Barker's Blues will certainly be up against it.

But the odds are already considerable for any man who has to step into the hottest of coaching seats when the season is already well under way. And that is something else that has not changed since Jezza took over from Walls more than a quarter of a century ago.