Shares in Arsenal have always been very expensive, and very rare. I have had mine for around 20 years after a friend bought it for me as a gift. The certificate sits in my little Arsenal file, protected by a plastic wallet. It is old enough that it is typewritten, not computer-generated. It has never been framed or mounted, but it is, I think, the most wonderful present I have ever received.

It was expensive, even then; my friend paid around £3,000 for it, as far as I know. But, as I’m sure all of the small shareholders feel, its worth was not tied up in its value. No shareholder would ever have asked for a dividend from the club; nobody bought them as an investment.

Instead, it was just a real privilege, a real revelation, to have the level of access that came with it: the chance to go to the annual general meetings, to get an understanding of how the club was run, to have a little piece of my team.

In those years, at the height of Arsène Wenger’s time, every match was an event. You would go to games and see these big men — men who, I imagine, would struggle in most circumstances to say anything personal — expressing their hope, their anger, their love for the team. Owning a sliver of that, having that sense of custodianship, heightened that involvement.

That has all changed now. This final takeover is the final cut of all that has happened to Arsenal in the last 10 or 12 years, the culmination of the gradual erosion of everything it was to be a shareholder, all the little pleasures it brought with it. You saw it at the A.G.M.: It was becoming more and more contentious, and the people who ran the club were more and more resentful of having to answer questions from the fans.

This feels like something of a line in the sand. Kroenke never has to talk to another supporter now. That is fine for him: He does not know anything about football; he is so far away from everything the club was. It is just about capital; Arsenal is just another corporation.

I feel very sad, though, as if it is the end of everything I loved about football. I don’t think I’m alone in that.