The John Lyall Tactic Experiment.

Sussex Hammer · February 2, 2011

After starting a new game thanks to my old hard drive packing up I noticed that I was becoming increasingly bored using my Hammers Retro and Away Tactics I made a thread about not long ago, although I cannot now find the thread on this forum it has bizarrely vanished!!! Have tactics threads been deleted?!?!

Anyway, at that time I was in the middle of reading the old West Ham manager, John Lyall’s autobiography. It was fascinating stuff especially the Chapter on the Hammers best ever League Season in 1985-86 where he described in detail how he went about the season tactically. He mentioned how having two shorter but quick forwards and wingers who could dribble and pass the Hammers played through the channels, knocking balls between full backs and centre backs to good effect.

I therefore decided to try my best to replicate those ideas and have come up with The John Lyall Home and John Lyall Away Tactics for your interest.

They have given me a pretty successful first season. The First Team came 6th in the League, The Reserves playing the same Tactic came 3rd and the Under 19’s again using the same Tactic won their Division. Before I had designed the tactics I had already played a few games and lost 4 already but that season using my old and then the new tactics I only lost matches to Everton, Man United, Liverpool, Spurs, Chelsea and Man City. So in essence the big clubs bar Everton. Also the Achilles Heel of these tactics which are 4-4-2 are when you play teams who play a man or men in the AM slots, but this is West Ham, I don’t care too much about defending!!!

What I had struggled with previously was scoring goals, but with The John Lyall Tactics Carlton Cole scored 14, Freddy Piquionne 15 and on loan Jo 17. I only brought 2 players in at the start. Jo and Jimmy Bullard and in January I strengthened with Juan and Moralez although Moralez is home sick = hopeless!!

The essence of the tactics are through balls and high dribbling on the wide men and through balls on at least one of the central midfield men, so you need players that benefit those ideas, IE high passing, dribbling and creativity stats.

As you will see from the table a fair few goals have been scored but with all forward thinking tactics it is difficult to get a balance defensively, although I do have an idea for my second season. I have my Centre Backs and Goalkeeper on a lower mentality than the rest of the team that I use a global mentality and so in the new season I may correct that and go fully global to try and extinguish any possible gap between my centre backs and the midfield.

My Away Tactic is obviously slightly more defensive than the home one and I also need to find new ideas for corner routines. I had good success earlier on with corners to the 6 yard box but those dried up. Anyway I feel that they both have high possession stats and good attacking play so if that’s what you are looking for in a tactic please feel free to try.

FORMATION

http://s250.photobucket.com/albums/gg265/SussexHammer/?action=view&current=Formation.jpg

RESULTS PART 1

http://s250.photobucket.com/albums/gg265/SussexHammer/?action=view&current=ResultsPartOne.jpg

RESULTS PART 2

http://s250.photobucket.com/albums/gg265/SussexHammer/?action=view&current=ResultsPartTwo.jpg

SQUAD PART 1

http://s250.photobucket.com/albums/gg265/SussexHammer/?action=view&current=SquadPartOne.jpg

SQUAD PART 2

http://s250.photobucket.com/albums/gg265/SussexHammer/?action=view&current=SquadPartTwo.jpg

TABLE

http://s250.photobucket.com/albums/gg265/SussexHammer/?action=view&current=Table.jpg