Hello and welcome to the price of football a show that looks at the money behind a beautiful game of me Kevin Day

and Liverpool University is Kira McGuire

here.

It's Dr. Who, time me, whimmy time again

because it's Friday, it's day but really it's it's Tuesday

evening we've just done the last pod and got quite sentimental about a

lovely message we had from a listener now loads of things could have happened in the last two days

made us angry and furious rather than sentimental but here we are and we have it into I was unable

to attend for once I had work reasons for not being able to do this in the because lo

behold the phone rang and I didn't recognize the number is my agent.

We had a lovely chat, we had a lovely chat, we introduced each other. We started on surname terms initially, but, so I couldn't do it so Kyra did this interview with

Ian Graham is former head of research at Liverpool Football Club and a very

interesting interview it is. Ian, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Before we go into perhaps the details of what you're doing now and your

role at Liverpool can you sort of give us an indication as to how you ended up in

football in the first place?

Yeah sure it's a story of lack really as a lot of things in football are.

I was working as a postdoctoral researcher working on polymer physics, which is very

interesting but very difficult career choice and my partner worked at the Cambridge exam board at the time.

Her boss spotted an advert in a sort of academic jobs board saying do you want to study football statistics for a living?

I had no idea such a thing was possible.

I wasn't particularly happy with my career choice. So I applied for the job and got it and it really was right at the

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