Deep Learning and Transfer Learning Architectures for English Premier League Player Performance Forecasting

TL;DR

This paper introduces a CNN-based model for predicting English Premier League player performance, outperforming traditional models and establishing a foundation for transfer learning in sports analytics.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel CNN architecture that surpasses previous models in EPL player performance forecasting and explores transfer learning with mixed results.

Findings

CNN outperforms Ridge regression and LightGBM in accuracy

Optimal CNN achieves high Spearman correlation with player rankings

Transfer learning from news data shows limited predictive power

Abstract

This paper presents a groundbreaking model for forecasting English Premier League (EPL) player performance using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). We evaluate Ridge regression, LightGBM and CNNs on the task of predicting upcoming player FPL score based on historical FPL data over the previous weeks. Our baseline models, Ridge regression and LightGBM, achieve solid performance and emphasize the importance of recent FPL points, influence, creativity, threat, and playtime in predicting EPL player performances. Our optimal CNN architecture achieves better performance with fewer input features and even outperforms the best previous EPL player performance forecasting models in the literature. The optimal CNN architecture also achieves very strong Spearman correlation with player rankings, indicating its strong implications for supporting the development of FPL artificial intelligence (AI) Agents and providing analysis for FPL managers. We additionally perform transfer learning experiments on soccer news data collected from The Guardian, for the same task of predicting upcoming player score, but do not identify a strong predictive signal in natural language news texts, achieving worse performance compared to both the CNN and baseline models. Overall, our CNN-based approach marks a significant advancement in EPL player performance forecasting and lays the foundation for transfer learning to other EPL prediction tasks such as win-loss odds for sports betting and the development of cutting-edge FPL AI Agents.