English FA - The balance of probability and when it's used needs changing.

I'm making this post as I felt it is needed to clear some of the issues brought up by this whole JT saga:

My main point being; The balance of probability rule in relation to the burden of proof in FA cases needs to be changed.

There are some things that this rule works for, and when dealing with smaller issues it can be used to come to the fairest outcome for all involved. This however is not the case when it comes to something as serious as racist abuse. When the punishment for this matter is so severe we cannot have a case where the FA are literally using guess work to come to a conclusion. There are a couple reasons why this is bad;

• Severe punishment: When a player can be banned up to 8 games on only balance of probability it leaves too much room for error. It may not be the end of the world if a club fails to overturn a card (while also being slightly easier to judge) but if a team was to lose it's best player just coming up to the last 8 games and go on to be relegated it could be potentially disastrous and set in motion a loss of million and millions of cash and place the club in free-fall. For this to happen on what could in the end be a decision of 'my word against his' is crazy.

• Gaming the system: With only needing to prove balance of probability it becomes much easier to charge someone with racist abuse. How long until we see a player taking it upon himself, or being told by a manager, to report a rival player for racist remarks. Perhaps just as the other player launches a bit of (normal) abuse/trash talk at him. It could easily come down again to a 'my word against his word' situation where the accused player could face a large game ban on something he didn't do. Hopefully we never see this happen, but we all know that players use many other dirty tactics to get ahead (diving, intimidation etc), so it is not beyond the realms of possibility to think it may happen.

Now remember even with such a lack of proof needed, the FA court has a conviction record in the very high 9x%. Racism is a very important subject and I'm not belittling the fact it needs to be taken seriously, but in my mind reviewing cases on nothing but balance of probability is not serious at all. It's almost a joke that something this serious can be judged in that way.

Nothing can be done retro-actively to the cases of this last season, but the FA must learn from these and change the way they pursue these types of cases.

P.s. Sorry if the formatting is off, I've only posted maybe one topic before.