What a couple of days it has been for the EPL, plenty of goals to whet our appetite for the festive season, however the quality of the matches has been overshadowed by the racism controversies surrounding two of the EPL’s best players.

A couple of days ago Luis Suarez was banned for 8 matches for alleged racial abuse against Patrice Evra during the Manchester United v Liverpool clash over 2 months ago. If this wasn’t bad enough, news filtered through yesterday that John Terry also has a case to answer in regards to the racial comments he allegedly made to Anton Ferdinand in Chelsea’s match against QPR just a week after the Suarez incident.

The difference between the two as it stands is that the FA have no evidence that Luis Suarez made any comments to Patrice Evra, the FA admitted as much yesterday. While in John Terry’s case there was enough evidence to suggest something occurred as England’s Crown Prosecution Service has authorised criminal charges to be laid against Terry.

Racial abuse in Football is something that will never be condoned, I just don’t know whether the FA are digging themselves a hole here by banning a Uruguayan for 8 matches and fining him £40,000 based on no evidence, while the Englishman who has been criminally charged has yet to be punished. The most John Terry could be fined if he is found guilty in the courts is £2,500 and this would obviously not carry a ban from any number of matches.

The John Terry matter won’t be seen in the courts until February at the earliest and any decision may not come from this until April/May of 2012. Meaning John Terry would be free to play out the remainder of the 2011/12 EPL season with no consequences while Luis Suarez sits out the busiest time of the year.

Should John Terry be found guilty of racial abuse it will be interesting to see whether the FA takes any further action against him on top of the punishment dished out by the courts, or whether they try and justify no action against Terry stating that the decision of the courts is punishment enough.

That would be a cop out and would mean that Liverpool would be without their best striker over the busy holiday period, while Chelsea keep their best defender for much of the Premier League season despite evidence suggesting that Terry actually has a case to answer while Suarez was banned for 8 matches based on no evidence.

The FA need to take action against Terry now if they want to avoid another racial controversy, this time it would be the FA’s favouritism of an Englishman over a Uruguayan!

Let us know your thoughts on this issue in the comments section!