Arsenal supporters have done the unthinkable: they have publicly declared their dissatisfaction with the club ownership.

I am an Arsenal fan and I completely, totally understand where they’re coming from. I agree with them, even. The club is floundering and clearly dropping in status and competition level. In an era of oil tycoons buying the league, we have an owner who flat out refuses to invest any money in the team and has been on record saying that he didn’t buy Arsenal to win trophies. Our owner only cares about his profits and he’s made that abundantly clear. The fans are sick of it and they recently came together to release a statement stating their anger. Most of the major supporter groups and large bloggers have backed the statement and petition (Though what they are actually petitioning isn’t clear). Its a joint effort against the ownership, demanding change.

Stan Kroenke is a 71-year-old American billionaire, husband of a Walmart heiress, and seeming collector of sports teams. Along with Arsenal, Kroenke Entertainment owns the Rams, The Avalanche, the Rapids, the Nuggets, and a professional lacrosse team. He, very clearly, does not care at all about the success of his teams. He is a businessman through and through, an investor whose loyalty is to his bottom line and nothing else. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t even know that he owns an English soccer team.

If you think Kroenke is actually passionate about the teams he owns and isn’t just in it for the money, think about this: he owns the Los Angeles Gladiators…a professional Overwatch team. They are a professional video game team. Stan Kroenke has never played a video game in his life. I would bet my entire life savings on the fact that Overwatch is a meaningless word to him. To think that he had any hand in buying that team or to think he actually cares if they win is absurd. I’m willing to bet his attitude toward them is similar to his attitude toward Arsenal: who cares as long as they’re making money.

This is why I find this whole ordeal completely absurd. Do you really think Stan Kroenke is going to care that the fans wrote him a letter? If he even reads the thing, that should be considered a win. Do you honestly think this old man, who has made A BILLION DOLLARS doing things his way is going to listen to us poor people (who aren’t even millionaires) because we sounded upset with him in a letter? What, realistically, do people actually expect this to accomplish? Kroenke probably has a team of executives and advisors making all of his financial and business decisions for him. He isn’t going to go against them because of an angry internet letter.

You can write all of the angry letters you want. You can vent in YouTube videos and write blog post after blog post about the poor leadership (we all know I’ve done that), but that won’t change anything at all. The most this is going to do is alienate our players. Granted, our players aren’t the best, but they are who we’ve got. I’d rather them be excited and motivated to play for this club and it’s supporters instead of thinking all of the fans are against them. Who knows, they might just overperform if they are committed to this club and its supporters. I want to support them and back them instead of saying they aren’t good enough. Kroenke isn’t going to suddenly change who he is, even if he says he will to avoid the PR backlash, things will just go back to how they’ve always been with no change. And we’ll back in the Europa League with players who don’t want to be on the team (just look at the mess around Kos right now).

The only thing that will get through to Kroenke is hitting him where it hurts, the only place you can possibly hurt American capitalist billionaires: the wallet. Stop buying tickets to the games. Stop buying kits. Stop buying merch. If you are unhappy with how this club is being run, don’t give a single penny to the people running it. If Kroenke starts taking massive losses on this Arsenal project, he’ll abandon it and we’ll get new owners. If you don’t think he’s passionate about this team, which he isn’t, and is only in it for the money, which he is, then STOP GIVING HIM MONEY! It’s a pretty simple equation. You might think that not giving them money will further hamper our transfer budgets, but who cares? It’s not like our budgets are amazing right now (we’ve signed one player who won’t see first team minutes for YEARS this offseason) and it might take a few seasons of getting worse before it gets better. Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to sacrifice a few years for the future success of this club? I firmly believe the only way to revitalize this club is to stop giving money to it until they get the point. Supporters have to hit Kroenke in the bank account to get the message across. Supporters have to stop financially supporting this mess.

But they won’t. Those fans who signed that petition or retweeted the letter will be right back in the Emirates in the fall. They’ll be sporting the new Auba kit and singing along with everyone else.

Because they are supporters and that’s what they do.