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Parramatta have felt the boost of finally claiming a win, but Brad Arthur needs their execution to improve after their worst fortnight of completions all year.

Brad Arthur has warned Parramatta near enough is no longer good enough as they aim to make a dent in the NRL's finals.

The Eels began to turn some kind of corner in last Saturday's win over North Queensland, with Arthur enjoying the company of a more buoyant group in camp this week.

But the real test now awaits.

Saturday night's heavyweight clash with Melbourne will tell if the Eels have really turned their fortunes around or last week's victory was merely false hope against a struggling side.

The Eels' six tries was the most they had scored in seven weeks, but their completion rates of 67.9 per cent and 70.5 per cent in their past two games are the worst of their season.

"We were happy with the way we played last week but certainly wasn't to a standard that's going to be good enough to beat the best teams in finals," Arthur said.

"It was one game. There was a change to the style of footy that we played in terms of our mentality that had been lost a little bit.

"We had more energy about our performance and we were way more aggressive and we'd lost that over a period of a couple of weeks.

"So we get an opportunity now to maintain what we did last week but certainly improve execution because we're going to be under way more pressure."

There is however some small silver lining to the Eels' late-season fall.

Their four straight losses before the Cowboys match has all but ruled them out of top-four contention, affording them the opportunity to rest players in the final round against Penrith.

Clint Gutherson is almost certain to be one of those players after last skipping a game in 2018, with the Eels having not been in this position in recent years.

"We're not in that situation at the moment, we know that we're going to be playing finals in that bottom half," Arthur said.

"It's about making sure that we get ourselves in best shape and ready to put our best foot forward in that game, and it definitely starts tomorrow night for us."

Halves Mitch Moses and Dylan Brown are unlikely to be among those rested after Arthur made the call to put Brown back on the left edge and position Moses on the right.

The Eels had made the opposite switch at the start of the season in a bid to allow Brown to kick more with less defensive pressure on kickers on the right.

"We felt last year that Mitchell did 95 per cent of the kicking and then we become a little bit easier to defend that way," Arthur said.

"It's improved (Brown)'s kicking game and now we're in a situation where he's got the confidence to kick on both sides of the field."