Merci Arsene et au revoir

Last week I was told that Arsene Wenger's instructions from on high are to keep Arsenal in the black, sell a few players each season and qualify for the Champions League. If along the way we win something so much the better, but as long as he keeps to the first three, his job is safe.

I don't know how true that is but I suspect it is probably not far from being accurate. At no other top flight club anywhere in the world would Wenger still be in a job following six and likely seven barren years. If the situation had been reversed and United had won the FA Cup in 2005 instead of us and then won nothing subsequently I don't believe Sir Alex Ferguson would still be in charge at Old Trafford. Yet Wenger is not only still in charge but has the backing of the board. The old cliché has it that the backing of the chairman is akin to the signing of a death warrant yet at Arsenal when the board say they back Wenger it appears that's just what they do.

It will be interesting to see what kind of team Wenger puts out for the 4th Round of the FA Cup against Aston Villa - surely our only realistic chance of silverware this season. Or will he once again sacrifice the cups in the (forlorn) hope that we can finish fourth or (whisper it) actually win the European Champions League (ECL)?

Many Arsenal fans bang on about how we have been in the ECL fourteen seasons on the trot and that Wenger is our most successful ever manager. Both true - but in those fourteen seasons we have only come close once to actually winning the thing, hardly a record to be proud of. Yes, Wenger is our most successful manager but he also hasn't won anything for almost seven seasons and in that time has sold a goodly number of players who should still be in the first team.

Bertie Mee was too quick to break up the Double-winning team and paid the price with several seasons of mid-table mediocrity. Wenger, similarly, was too eager to break up the Invincibles and we look set for seasons of if not mid-table mediocrity then certainly a few seasons in the Europa League, a particularly bitter pill to swallow if, as looks likely, the team from the wrong end of the Seven Sisters Road finishes above us and does qualify for the ECL. Our defeat yesterday at home to the Red Devils did nothing to lessen that possibility.

There are just eight days of the January transfer window still open for Arsenal to buy some big names to give us that final push in the three competitions in which we still have an interest. I am not holding out hope that by the time the window slams shut there will be any new players at the Emirates. I believe Wenger was pushed into buying when we lost 8-2 at Old Trafford and had we lost 1-0, 2-1 or even 3-0 he would have persevered with the squad we had.

There is obviously something terribly wrong at London Colney. When he joined the club, the oldies - Seaman, Dixon, Adams, Parlour, Winterburn, Bould, Keown etc thanked Wenger for extending their careers thanks to his revolutionary dietary plans. Now it seems a player gets a light knock and he is out for weeks. Young men in their late teens and twenties should be able to kick a ball for 90 minutes twice a week without getting injured. Sure, the game is faster but even so...

Arsenal are a big club, one of the biggest in the world. It is not enough to live on past glories. We triumphed in the 1930s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. We need to do it again soon. Life is cyclical and so is football yet we have been in the top flight since the end of the Great War. I don't see our place there threatened but nor do I want to see us struggling mid-table. We, the fans, deserve better.

Therefore, it is with a heavy heart that I say, "Merci, Arsene, et au revoir. La sortie est par là"

Oh Kelly Brook do get real!

It's January and the sun is shining. It's a new year and things are looking bleak in the Eurozone and Alex Salmond wants independence for the Scots. So things are bleak...

Then along comes Kelly brook with the funniest quote of the year so far. 'I often think if I had been better at focusing on one thing exclusively I'd have had an acting career like Kate Winslet or a career as a top dancer."

Oh Kelly behave, my sides are splitting, no please stop. You are too funny...

Half price TV legends brought to book

I write books. So far I've 21 to my name - on a variety of subjects. I say this not to boast but as a precursor to what I am about to write so you will understand and hopefully forgive my bitterness.

I was in my local Smiths a summer or two back when I overheard a man say to his wife, "I wish I was a writer. They must make so much money." I didn't disillusion him. My first book was published when I was 24 and my most recent appeared in 2010. My advances have ranged from three figures to low five figures (very low).

It irks me therefore to see publishers splashing out huge advances on celebrity autobiographies when one, the celebrities don't actually write the books and two, the publishers can never hope to recoup their outlay. I popped into my local Waterstones about two hours ago and there on the shelves are books "by" Lee Evans, Rob Brydon, James Corden, Jason Manford, Peter Kay, Steve Coogan, Simon Mayo, Noel Fielding and a good number more. These books all had one thing in common - each and everyone bore a sticker that read "Half Price".

About three months ago, Smiths had a delivery of a palletload of books about the talentless boyband One Direction. There are two piles of the books, next to the sports section, and each pile is about four feet high. Three months ago, the pile was four feet high. This morning the pile was four feet high.

In the Winter 2012 edition of The Author, the magazine of The Society of Authors the biographer Roger Lewis bemoans the lack of critical faculties in the media and publishing. He points out that he was hired as a television critic for a national newspaper only for the editor to emasculate his work.

Some celebrities can write - Paul O'Grady for one but most take the money, hire a ghost and run. I'm still struck by the memory of Sharon Osbourne going to Leicester, I think, to sign copies of "her" novel and getting caught in a traffic jam. She apologised to the crowd for being late and proceeded to sign her name in a book that she hadn't written.

There is, of course, nothing new in this. Jordan doesn't write her books and if the stories are to be believed doesn't read them either. Naomi Campbell neither wrote nor read Swan yet her name appeared on the cover. Don't these celebrities have any shame? Do they not feel at least a little embarrassed signing a book that they had very little to do with, apart from putting their name on the cover. We know Coco Chanel didn't actually mix the perfumes herself but she did draw the designs for her LBDs, which is more than Victoria Beckham, another "author", does for "her" overpriced frocks.

So what is to be done? Well, publishers will continue to churn out celebrity pap but at least cut the advances so that proper authors can get a slice of the cake. How many real books could have been published, marketed and sold with the money wasted on the books bearing the names of Lee Evans, Rob Brydon, James Corden, Peter Kay, Steve Coogan, James Manford, Simon Mayo and Noel Fielding? It's not even as if they need the money...

Bargain hunters beware

Good to see bargains galore at my local Smiths...

The problems with modern football...

Having a chat recently with an old chum, we fell into discussing (as we so often do) the problems with modern football - and not just Arsene Wenger's stated ambition for Arsenal to finish fourth.

I listed a number of things that irritate me about modern football. These include but are no by means restricted to:

• The linesman being referred to as "the referee's assistant"
• Squad numbers - go back to 1-11 and avoid the ridiculous situation of having a midfielder like Gareth Bale wearing a left-back's shirt.
• Clubs changing their kits every two years
• FA Cup Semi-Finals being played at Wembley - play them at Hillsborough, Villa Park, Old Trafford, White Hart Lane, the Emirates as they used to be. Wembley should be the preserve of finals and internationals otherwise playing there has no special meaning.
• Play-offs (and also play-offs being played at Wembley)
• Seven subsitutes - two is more than adequate and if a goalkeeper is sent off the team should not be allowed to substitute an outfield player or there is no real sanction. The goalkeeper is the only specialist position on the field.
• Abolition of the European Cup, Cup Winner's Cup and Uefa Cup and replacement by the European Champions League and Europa League. It is a nonsense to have teams who not only are not champions of their own country's league but may have finished as low as fourth to be playing in a European Champions League competition.
• Having almost as many officials in European matches as there are players - and then still making bad decisions when a linesman and man with radio are on the same side of the goal.
• The referee brandishing a second yellow card before showing the red.
• Changing the names of the leagues. Okay stick with the Premier League but the Championship? What was wrong with Division 1? And League 1 and League 2? Calling it League 1 doesn't make it any more exciting or the football any better than when it was the Third Division.

Any additions?

Intimate (n) dealing with close, personal relationships

Congratulations to television hosts Michael Underwood and Angellica Bell who have got married in New York.

I have met them both and they are a delightful couple. However, on her twitter site the new Mrs Underwood said that the day was "amazing and intimate". I am sure it was amazing but I am not sure how "intimate" it can be with a press photographer following you. Perhaps, she has a different understanding of the word intimate than the rest of us do...

An end to The X Factor

So The X Factor comes to an end again and Essex boy Matt Cardle wins.

Was it fixed? No.

Was it manipulated? Hmmm...

One thing has to be said: the OBs left an awful lot to desire.

Host Dermot O'Leary announced Michelle Keegan as "Rochelle". I could not understand one word Stacey Solomon said and the chap with her who urged everyone to "go out and vote" was, I think getting confused with the General Election.

It was also funny to see professional wag and Scouser Coleen Rooney urging Rebecca to "bring it home to Liverpool". This from the girl who lives in... Alderley Edge, Cheshire. Odd that so many people who profess to love Liverpool live nowhere near it. And was it really necessary to have an additional minder every time the camera returned to Coleen?

So Matt Cardle can look forward to 18 months of fame before he is dropped by Sony and the rest can go back to whatever they were doing before the show began. How long before Mary is back on the five items or less till. Will Wagner continue to visit Peter Stringfellow's barber? And let us hope this is the last we will ever see of the deluded, thoroughly unpleasant and totally overrated Cher Lloyd.

If rumours are correct, it could also be the last X Factor outing for Dermot O'Leary, Cheryl Kerl, Konnie Huq and even Simon Cowell.

Here's an idea: let Konnie (lovely as she is) go back to kids' shows - she seems out of depth on anything aimed at anyone over 16; get rid of Cheryl Kerl, Dannnnniiiiii Minogue and the gauche and ludicrous Louis Walsh (whose hair seems to change colour every week) and bring in Katy Perry and Nicole Scherzinger as judges with Cowell.