Dear Eddie,

I trust you are full of remorse after your disgraceful actions following Saturday’s match against Chesterfield.

In 16 years of covering the ups and downs of AFC Bournemouth for this newspaper, I have never before witnessed such conduct of someone purporting to be the figurehead of the football club.

A respected colleague in the press box, who has been reporting football around the world for 50 years, said he had also never seen anything like it.

I cannot begin to imagine what the club’s loyal supporters must have made of your histrionics, particularly the younger ones including those children in your executive box.

Irrespective of your intentions when you decided to take to the pitch, it was an ill-advised move, especially in the current climate when you are already perceived as public enemy number one with a good number of supporters.

As I pointed out to you recently, your comment during a fans’ forum about going to watch Southampton will forever haunt you. Therefore, rubbing peoples’ noses in it just nine days later was hardly going to repair any bridges.

When I first saw you striding towards the North Stand, my initial thought was that you were going to thank supporters for their backing and perhaps even proffer an apology following another poor result. I thought maybe you had seen the error of your ways.

After all, and considering your treatment of them in recent weeks, I thought the home crowd had been patient and particularly supportive and not once during the game had there been any murmurings of discontent.

Understandably, following a fifth successive league defeat, some boos did greet the final whistle, although a large number of fans waited around to applaud the players for their efforts.

The alarm bells started to sound for me when I noticed your applause seemed rather sarcastic. And I knew this was going to be no friendly exchange once the stewards had started to come between you and some of the supporters.

It became even more apparent that all was not well when they started chanting “you don’t know what you’re doing”. And, once the cameramen and photographers had gone into meltdown, it was clear to me you, as chairman, had overstepped the mark.

I was relieved to say the least when the stewards appeared to have diffused this potentially incendiary incident by ushering you away from the crowd, even if your credibility, what had been left of it, was now at rock bottom.

However, it was clear your antics were far from over when you reacted angrily to taunts of “we want Mitchell out”.

Snatching the microphone and responding with a curt retort of “who do you want in then?” was childish. Sadly, while your misplaced utterings to those behind the goal had only been heard by a few hundred supporters, you now laid bare your behaviour for everybody in the stadium to see.

It may have escaped your notice but your customers, those people that part with large sums of money to watch and give financial support to the football club, were both bewildered and horrified at your outrageous conduct.

Your vice-chairman Jeff Mostyn offered “a thousand apologies” to stewards as he headed ashen-faced down the tunnel after trying to calm some aggrieved supporters.

If you did not know it already, having had footage and reports of the incident splashed all over national television and newspapers, you brought shame on this proud football club.

I understand, however, your actions were not confined to the pitch and, after you had made a fool of yourself in public, you did similar in the privacy of the dressing room.

Not for the first time it would seem you were an unwelcome visitor and apparently chose to lecture the players, among other things, about the consequences of falling attendances to their wages.

As chairman and owner, you may argue that you are fully within your rights to enter the sanctuary of the changing room to address your employees and discuss performance issues. There is a time and a place for everything though.

Tomorrow, however, you will hope this same group of players will secure a positive result at Leyton Orient to keep the club off the foot of League One with your dressing room speech ringing in their ears.

As I have said before, I have a great deal of sympathy with you over the outcry that has greeted the player sales during the past 12 months. I realise your hands, in most cases, have been tied.

However, any respect I had for you evaporated in a matter of minutes at the Seward Stadium on Saturday. Eddie, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you lost the plot and went too far.

In my opinion, once you crossed that white line, you passed the point of no return.

Yours sincerely

Neil Perrett

Echo football reporter