I think he just got fed up waiting for Stockley Park to show him something and went with his original decision. In all the time that he was stood at the monitor he was only shown the one camera angle from a long shot and most of that was a frozen frame. You can see him saying something to the fourth official with a puzzled look.
When Mike Dean went over to the pitchside monitor they didn’t show any replays, just a still image. What was the point of that? Even Dean seemed confused by what he was supposed to be looking at.
What on earth was he thinking? It wasn’t an attempt to get the ball, he wasn’t trying to force McTominay in a different direction, he just went flying in with his leg straight out. Roy Kean would have been proud of that.
The TV companies have bought the coverage and now they’ve bought the game too. I said this at the beginning about VAR. TV has gone from being a spectator to being involved in the matches.
The whole concept of VAR is wrong. It cannot be accurate for such close borderline decisions. Huddle raised the point about the timing of the ball being hit being vague and both he and Ferdinand say that for any defender in the future the decision will be to clear the player out rather than get sent off for trying to avoid him.