This Sunday was fairly familiar for me. I was sporting a cracking hangover and woke up wondering what happened the previous night. The ‘Big Clash’ of the day, as usual, didn’t match the hype that it was given. Patrice Evra failed to remember he’s a great left-back against Chelsea and an angry Scotsmen made more comments about a referee.

However, the Chelsea-United game wasn’t the match that made me feel sick. It wasn’t the beer either. It was the fairly entertaining game at the JJB, sorry I mean the DW stadium. Either way, they are both shocking names. However, the most imaginatively named stadium has to go to Cardiff City and their new ‘Cardiff City Stadium’. At least Newcastle have a dot com to boast about.

It wasn’t the Stadium that made me feel sick. It was the empty seats within. I think it is appalling that a Premier League game could only muster a mere 16,172 supporters. Maybe we could blame high ticket prices? Perhaps you could blame the opposition? Or perhaps we could come to the conclusion that Wigan are not a Premier League team. Never have been and never will be.

I am a traditionalist. You might say I’m a little bitter and jealous, being a Derby fan, that my team are no longer in the top flight. I like big teams in the top leagues. I like teams with great tradition and more importantly, with great support. I don’t like the ‘fairytales’ of smaller sides in the Prem. They are mostly due to rich owners rather than good management. With attendances such as Wigan’s their survival surely can’t be sustainable. Wigan fans must dread the day when DW’s ticker stops.

In the Championship there were 7 fixtures with higher attendances this weekend and that doesn’t include League One fixtures that could be played Leeds, Charlton, Norwich and Southampton.

A couple of weeks ago, along with a few mates, I drew up our ‘traditional’ league tables and I can tell you that Wigan didn’t fair well. In fact, if they got relegated they wouldn’t even be in the Football League. That is what would happen in my perfect football world. I can also tell you that Hull didn’t fare well either.

I want the Premier League to be reclaimed and have a more traditional look.

Who’s with me?

Whatever happened to the ‘Golden Generation’? They seemed to kick up a fuss a few years ago without ever doing anything. They even gained a reputation by not winning anything. Apparently Sven wasted them and we missed our chance.

Another ‘Golden Generation’ knocked them out on penalties in 2004 and they didn’t win anything. Damn that winker. However, as much as I hate the phrase that was invented by THAT chief executive, the golden generation hasn’t really broken up.

The only names that can be omitted that the list/generation are the names Campbell we know what happened to him and Neville, we also know what happened to him. He’s got old and he has a tendency to get over excited when playing local rivals.

Liverpool and City fans, please insert appropriate adjective here…..

Another player who’s hardly Mr Popular at Anfield and Eastlands, and I would imagine not on their Christmas card list, is Owen. He was also part of that Golden Generation but it would take a brave man to bet against him not being on the plane to South Africa.

Personally, I would take him.

Again, Liverpool and City fans, please insert appropriate adjective here…..

Though, one illustrious part of the ‘Golden Generation’ is losing his shine and appears to be swapping gold with marble. What has happened to Rio Ferdinand? I have never been Rio’s biggest fan. Its not that I don’t think he’s a good footballer. He is.

It’s because he never turned into the class act he was suppose to be. Where’s the talented ball playing centre half effortlessly switching defence into attack. Instead he now simply passes the ball to Carrick or Barry and in an England shirt, tends to make simple mistakes. Ben Foster seems to be making the mistakes for United at the minute.

Yes, he has won league titles. And yes, he has won the European Cup. My argument here is that when he made the move to Old Trafford he was hailed as the ‘best defender in the world’. He never really took on that title despite being the world’s most expensive defender.

He never truly lived up to his potential and never became that defender that would have been the envy of the world. He seemed more interested in playing practical ‘jokes’ on other members of the England team.

So even though he is a shoe-in for the World Cup squad, if fit, as are the likes of Cole, Terry, Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney, for the first time in his career he is fighting for his place in the England team and if I had my way, I would stick with the West Ham 1966 theory and put Upson in alongside Terry.

Here’s to the new ‘Golden Generation’. Lets hope this lot can win something.

Forget about the World Cup next summer. Forget about South Africa and forget about the limited amount of beds that await the world’s football fans there. Forget about Fabio Capello and his impressive managerial record and the inevitable column inches that will concern Micheal Owen this summer.

Even forget about the next European Championships in Ukraine/Poland, that’s if they can make it happen of course.

Because recently there has been talk of who will succeed Capello in the self-entitled ‘biggest and hardest job in football’. A title that is nothing to do with managing footballers, but more to do with handling the hopes and expectations of 60 million people every other summer and being able to cope with the claws of the English press.

Perhaps the ridiculous and idiotic wages the FA pay is another reason.

Capello always keeps his cards extremely close to his chest and repeatedly won’t be drawn into answering whether or not he will extend his contract beyond 2012. So names such as Mourinho, Wenger and Hiddink get branded about.

However, there is an Englishman who is making a strong case for the hot seat and thankfully its not Allardyce. Unlike Allardyce, his coaching methods are widely praised across Europe and he is well respected.

He’s won major honours. He has experience of international football and succeeding. He’s managed one of Europe’s biggest clubs, Inter Milan and is currently punching far and beyond his weight and succeeding against all odds.

Who am I talking about? Roy Hodgson. I’m even surprising myself by writing this. Roy Hodgson should be seriously considered as the next England manager. His record speaks for itself, even though he does seem a little senile at times.

He has already put his hat in the bag for the British Olympic team (AKA England U23s) and his astounding success at club level with Fulham surely makes him the only credible English candidate. He was also in the frame to succeed both Hoddle and Keegan.

If the FA want proven success (he’s won bags full of titles across Scandinavia and took Switzerland to a World Cup and Euro’s), experience (he’s pretty old) and an Englishman, Hodgson is the only option.

However, that is another question for another day. Capello has so far been successful and has one of the best squads any England manager has ever had. Rooney, Terry, Ferdinand, Cole, Lampard, Gerrard. Hardly seem likes a ‘hard’ job.

For now, Roy will just have be like any other England fan and see if Capello can cut it against the big guns next summer. If he can’t, perhaps this blog will become more relevant. Perhaps it can be third time lucky for Roy.

Anyway, where’s my St Georges car flag?

The Championship season is well under way and it will be a fascinating tussle for the teams who are battling it out for a big juicy slice of the pizza that is the Premiership.

Out of 24 teams in the second tier of English football, realistically you could say 15 have actual aspirations to be promoted or to be in or around the play-offs come May.

West Brom, Newcastle, Boro, Cardiff and Sheff Utd are all teams that expect to be filling just the two automatic spots.

Other teams like Palace, Preston, Leicester, Derby, Sheff Wed, Forest, Reading and even Darren Ferguson’s Peterborough believe they have an outside chance at the play-offs.

However one team, aided by their cocky and bullish manager have made a terrible start to the season and I’m actually quite delighted to see it.

Who am I talking about? Ipswich Town. They currently sit 23rd (at time of writing) and are still searching for the first win of the season. This is the Ipswich who are meant to be title contenders.

Don’t get the wrong impression here, Ipswich Town is a good honest football club and (please forgive the typical footballer ‘just signed’ response here) has great tradition and history.

Its just I’m not convinced that Roy Keane is a decent manager. Not one beardy bit. Great players don’t necessarily make good manager’s, just take a look at the Tony Adams Rule.

Yes, you can say he got Sunderland promoted at the first opportunity when he took over at the Stadium of Light and yes, you can say that he kept Sunderland up in the Premiership. Two valid points.

Though the team he took over had got promotion two seasons earlier as Champions with 94 points and the team he inherited was essentially the same with players like Whitehead and Lawrence still in the squad.

He then got promoted (with the aid of a few late, maybe fortuitous goals) and spent fortunes on streams of players who were either here or there. In his time in the North East, Keane spent some £80 million on players with only Kenywe Jones a player with real premiership quality.

He grew a beard and eventually quit so he didn’t have to get kicked out by the enormous boot of Niall Quinn.

For me, he has already partly dug his grave at Ipswich and he did so in his very first press conference. Why did he do this? By saying that he will get promoted within two seasons or he would be a failure. This was his first error. Championship managers should only flirt with the word promotion as in a league as unpredictable as the Championship it can all go suddenly wrong.

Take a leaf out of Nigel Clough’s book by simply promising improvement at Derby.

This week Keane wrote off his teams chances of automatic promotion and only heralded ‘hope’ for the play-offs. Is that a beard you’re growing Roy?

The transfer window is open and come teatime on 31st August we shall all be glued to Sky Sports news (whilst comprising our Top 3 female presenters obviously) and praying that the yellow ticker at the bottom of the screen flashes with a big name or that new wonder kid from South America who is having a medical at our club.

As the transfer window ticked by last August on Sky Sports, it was amongst the best television I have ever seen. How many times to you get to see Man City supporters dance around Eastlands with tea towels round their heads whilst trying to sexually harass a reporter? Answer, quite a lot actually. I’m told that reporter is still walking around like Bruce Wayne.

Though with all the money that is flying around the Premiership these days it seems near impossible to know how much a player has actually been brought or sold for. A lot are now ‘undisclosed’. For me this is an absolutely disgrace to the fans, who are the ones the club are accountable to.

We buy the shirts, fill the grounds and support our team and all this comes at a price. I know it’s a bit cliché but without the fans, there wouldn’t be a team for the players to play in or the managers to manage in or Arab millionaires to have a mid-life crisis.

You read constantly ‘a fee believed to be about’, why on earth do we hardly ever know what much a player has gone for anymore? Even the big money transfers such as Adebayor was undisclosed. Almost every other transfer in the football league seems to be undisclosed. Even if was for a couple of bibs and a set of goal posts, as a fan I want to.

We are like taxpayers to our clubs and I think that there finances should be made available to us in more detail or at the very least just let us know how much money have you spent on our new Ecuadorian striker. A rant always seems better when we can attach a fee to it.

The MPs are currently in the brown stuff by not been able to decide which house they live in and I think that our football clubs should also be as transparent as them. The more ‘undisclosed fees’ I see, the more it makes me worry about where ‘our’ money has actually gone. The words ‘agent’, ‘Alladyce’, ‘fee’ and ‘bung’ spring to mind.

Just do us a favour and tell us. What have you got to hide?

Ps Incidentally for anyone wondering my top three Sky Sports presenters, they would go Georgie Thompson, Natalie Sawyer and Clare Tomlinson.