Voss said the Lions' board had failed to adequately invest in player development during critical re-building seasons for the club. When combined with the exodus of key young talent at the conclusion of last season, Voss believes that new coach Justin Leppitsch had been left with a brittle and shallow list, evidenced by the team's winless start to the season.

"The challenge of putting the resources around the players is so critical that you're able to put the right resources in when you're developing," Voss said on SEN.

"Having a chat with Eddie [McGuire] about his time at Collingwood and the right times to be able to put that development in, they probably tipped money in before they could, so they might've been finishing 14th or 15th on the ladder, [that] is the time to put it in."

"Now that's really hard in a business sense, I don't know too many business people who come in and say 'oh we're going to run at a loss and we're quite happy with that for the next two or three years because it doesn't make business sense', but there's a lag in investment, you have to put the money in before you get the reward."

The three-time premiership captain emphasised how difficult it was to strike the balance between re-building properly and meeting short-term demands for competitiveness in the fickle Brisbane market. He suggested the league provide funds for the Lions' on-field development.

"Well this is the battle, the market says that the market doesn't let it happen up there, historically it says that, the reality is that if the Brisbane Lions are not winning football games, then the numbers drop," he said.

"The only answer right now for this interim period of time is the AFL has to be able to tip in some funds."

Voss, who was controversially sacked late last season despite leading his side to the cusp of a finals berth, explained how he had been planning on increasing the roles of the now-departed quintet of Lion cubs had he remained coach.

"All of them were ready to go, outside of probably Billy Longer I thought that all of those were ready to go for senior football and take a senior position within the team," he said.

"Sam Docherty was ready to take the half-back position, Elliot Yeo had already established himself and the plan was to move to him from into the midfield at some stage to add some pace and dash through there, [Jared] Polec was ready to go, we just needed to get a pre-season under his belt, [Patrick] Karnezis still needed to work on his engine a little bit and still needed another pre-season, and Billy Longer was just a 19-year-old ruckman who is still developing.

"I don't think you can dance around it, the five that have left has really impacted the depth."

With Daniel Rich, Matthew Leuenberger, Daniel Merrett and Pearce Hanley all sidelined, Voss was not surprised that the Lions had been unable to cope.

"They've had to replace [injured players] with 'year oners,' so we're taking out 100-game players and we're putting in year one, or game one, or game two, or game three, so there will be holes, for Leppa, it's how they compete at the same time while they're doing that at the same time."