Sigh.. here I go.
The Luke Shaw decision is something that has been bothering me and something I have been sensing in the undercurrent of the VAR wave that hasn't been explored yet. I'm going to try to put it into words.
Lets first look at what happened: Luke shaw went for a 50-50 with the Burnley player, got some of the ball, and the ref who was in full view of it, did not deem it to be a foul.
Then he looks at it in slo-mo and thinks, "Hang on! I see studs coming to contact with leg. Therefore, it is a possible red card offense!".
There seems to be an assumption that looking at an incident in slow motion is necessary for the referee to make a decision. It seems sensible on the face of it. If you see something happening slowly, you have more time to process whats happening and parse through what actually happened with all the knowledge possible. HOWEVER, what seems to be never really discussed and factored into the VAR protocols is that there's a ton of very relevant information lost when we watch an incident like that in slow motion. Things like "momentum" and "speed of action" are very important in determining things like "excessive force" or "potential to cause injury". So when the referee looks at the slo-mo especially with the additional emphasis on the frame where the studs meet the leg, he basically had no choice under the rules but to say its a at least a possible red card offense. Whereas in real time, he saw that as soon as Shaw got the ball he pulled out of the challenge and while the studs did meet the leg, the potential to cause injury was not as extreme as it looks.
Note here that Shaw did NOT get a red card!
Why? Because the ref knows instinctively the tackle was not that dangerous and not worthy of a red. However, by the letter of the law it really should have been a red. (I have seen Shaka Hislop of ESPN FC, among others, argue just that).
So, what are the bigger implication of this?
I think all in all, Kevin Friend probably did the right thing. However, he's getting shit on by everybody for it both ways. And therefore, I think this is an unsustainable situation. Either we take this seriously and properly contextualize the use of slow motion replays on VAR, or we risk falling to the opposite extreme where over time literally any contact between studs on player regardless of context would be red card.
I dunno, maybe people think thats for the better, but I would argue it would make football a lot more methodical, and a lot less fun.
TLDR: slo-mo replays are paradoxically less accurate depictions of an incident and should be used with care in VAR