Lyall had been at West Ham United since he was a schoolboy and had built teams around the club’s traditional commitment to attacking, entertaining football. His greatest side, the ‘Boys of ’86’, had finished third in the First Division, still West Ham’s highest-ever league finish. Three years later, however, the Hammers were relegated and Lyall departed.
The man chosen to replace him was Lou Macari, a former Celtic, Manchester United and Scotland striker who had managed Swindon Town.
For Tony Gale, it was almost the complete opposite of what West Ham needed.
“I think that was a decision that the board made thinking, if we’re going to change, we might as well go the whole way rather than go and try and get the same type of manager as John Lyall and a younger one, which I thought would have been the better bet," Gale told Football Presse.
“Trevor Brooking had retired then, so Trevor was around. He maybe could have taken that over with Billy helping him and then keeping the two on together. That would have been the best way to go about it, I feel — Billy Bonds and Trevor Brooking straight away.
“And I don’t think John Lyall would have resented that. He maybe could have moved upstairs into a director of football role, which could have been created for him because he deserved it, and kind of mentored those two guys.”
It was a fascinating alternative because both Brooking and Bonds already understood the club, its supporters and the players. Bonds had retired in 1988 and had worked as a youth coach under Lyall, while Brooking had just finished his playing career. Bonds would eventually take over from Macari in February 1990 and lead West Ham back to the top flight.
Instead, West Ham opted for a clean break.
Macari arrived in July 1989, becoming the first West Ham manager appointed without a previous connection to the club. He lasted seven months and 39 matches.
Gale was still playing at the time and found the change in approach difficult to understand.
“When Lou came in, I’ll give Lou his credit, he bought some good players. He bought some good players because we went down. He bought some established Second Division players, stroke First Division players.
“And that was when he’d left after seven months. He’d left that legacy to Billy because Billy wasn’t that good in the transfer market. He was a good motivational man, so he already knew those players. But that was the legacy that Lou had left.”
There was therefore a strange contradiction to Macari’s brief spell. Gale believed the manager had made some good recruitment decisions, but he did not believe the footballing philosophy behind them was right for the players already at West Ham.
And the biggest problem, in his eyes, was training.
“The training sessions were archaic. It was just, you know, when you’ve got world-class players like Liam Brady and Alan Devonshire and Alvin Martin and that, everybody was looking a little bit nonplussed.
“It was run, run, run, run, run.
“His basis of the football was, ‘Look, I know you’ve got talent, but we don’t need to work on that talent. We just need to be fit as fiddles and just run, run, run, run, run.’
“And that’s what training was. There was a lack of ideas, a lack of thought. I thought it was a laziness in coaching.”
That was the real problem for Gale.
West Ham had spent years developing a particular kind of football under Lyall. The players were accustomed to working with the ball, understanding the game and being encouraged to express themselves.
Now, Gale felt, the emphasis had switched towards fitness rather than developing the footballing qualities the squad already possessed.
And there was an obvious mismatch between that philosophy and the calibre of some of the players.
Liam Brady had arrived from Juventus in 1987. Alan Devonshire was one of the most gifted midfielders of his generation. Alvin Martin had been an England international and a cornerstone of Lyall’s great side. Gale himself had been part of the 1985–86 team.
This was not a squad short of footballers.
“It was run, run, run, run, run.”
For Gale, the repetition says almost everything.
Yet he does not turn the story into a simple character assassination of Macari. There were things he respected, and one of them was the manager’s work in the transfer market.
“As I say, having said that, Lou was good in the transfer market. Got some players in, and not everybody disliked him or the way he went on.
“But he had his problems as well because there was the gambling thing going on, which he eventually came a cropper with. So that was going on in the background. So he had his off-field problems, but he was a good man, I must say.”
Macari’s eventual departure had little to do with Gale’s complaints about training. Allegations surrounding betting and illegal payments at Swindon led to his resignation in February 1990. West Ham’s official history records that his seven-month tenure ended after those allegations became public, with Billy Bonds returning to take charge.
But by then Macari had already left West Ham with the beginnings of the team that would eventually get them out of the Second Division.
Luděk Mikloško, Trevor Morley, Martin Allen and Ian Bishop were among the players brought in during his short reign, and all would go on to play significant roles for the club.
That is why Gale’s assessment is more complicated than simply saying Macari was a bad manager.
He believes Macari got important things wrong, particularly in how he tried to coach a group of players who had been brought up in a completely different footballing culture. But he also accepts that some of the foundations for what followed came from Macari’s recruitment.
And what followed was almost exactly what Gale had suggested should have happened in the first place.
Bonds took over in February 1990. The former captain knew the club inside out, understood its traditions and already knew many of the players. He would guide West Ham to promotion in 1991, finishing second in the Second Division, while also reaching the FA Cup semi-finals.
For Gale, the timing makes the missed opportunity under Lyall even more frustrating.
“I thought that would have been the better bet.”
There is no suggestion from Gale that football should simply stand still because a successful manager has gone. His argument is almost the opposite: West Ham needed to evolve, but it needed to understand what it already had.
Lyall had spent 15 years building that identity. He had won two FA Cups, taken West Ham to a European final and produced the side that came within touching distance of the First Division title in 1986. His departure followed relegation, but it did not erase everything that had made his teams successful.
Gale believes West Ham could have preserved that knowledge while beginning a new era.
Instead, they went in the other direction.
And for a player who had lived through the best of Lyall’s West Ham, the contrast was stark.
“When you’ve got world-class players like Liam Brady and Alan Devonshire and Alvin Martin and that, everybody was looking a little bit nonplussed.”
Perhaps that is Gale’s most revealing description of the Macari era.
The players were there.
The experience was there.
The talent was there.
What Gale felt was missing was an understanding of how to make it work.
“There's a lack of ideas, a lack of thought.”
And in the end, that was what made Macari such an uncomfortable fit for West Ham.
The club had spent years teaching players to play football.
Macari, in Gale’s view, seemed to spend his brief spell teaching them to run.
Tony Gale's book "That’s Entertainment" is from Reach Sport - which is available here.
