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

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02412 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.02412/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 26 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Longformer: The Long-Document Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05150/) (2020)
- [HuggingFace's Transformers: State-of-the-art Natural Language Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03771/) (2019)
- [Fast Differentiable Sorting and Ranking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.08871/) (2020)
- [The Application of Machine Learning Techniques for Predicting Results in Team Sport: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.11762/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [OpenFPL: An open-source forecasting method rivaling state-of-the-art Fantasy Premier League services](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09992/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

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.