Portsmouth boss reveals future for midfield experiment after surprise call
Portsmouth boss John Mousinho sprung a surprise with Zak Swanson in pre-season wins at Farnborough and Woking. Now he’s discussed the future of the Arsenal signing’s midfield role.
John Mousinho has declared the Zak Swanson Pompey midfield experiment a success.
But the Blues boss feels the former Arsenal man’s future next season will be back in the right-back where he shone last term.
Arsenal signing impresses after Pompey position switch
Swanson has been deployed in the middle of the park, as Mousinho’s men opened their pre-season campaign with quick-fire wins over Woking and Farnborough this week.
The 24-year-old played the second half of the 2-0 success at the National League side on Tuesday, as he was used with Andre Dozzell in a 4-2-3-1 formation.
Swanson then started with Dozzell the following evening and was on the scoresheet in the 5-0 success at Cherrywood Road.
With Pompey playing a different 11 in each half of those games, it’s tested the depth of Mousinho’s squad with the head coach open over the need for reinforcements in the middle of the park.
With numbers strong in the right-back, it has offered the chance to have a look at Swanson in the middle and give the man who arrived at Fratton Park to get the minutes for fitness he needs.
Terry Devlin, Marlon Pack and impressive academy Fraser Thomas are the other players deployed centrally so far.
John Swift is now building fitness as the Blues go to Crawley tomorrow for their next outing and have games against Reading, Hawks and Dutch side PEC Zwolle to come before the league curtain-raiser at Oxford on August 9.
Mousinho detailed his thinking over the Swanson midfield call - and how things are likely to unfold moving forward.
He said: ‘It’s a bit of both (filling holes and looking at Swanson as a midfielder).
‘We still primarily see Zak as a right-back and a right-back who performed very well for us last season.
‘The situation in terms of the players we have in the building is John (Swift) isn’t quite ready yet and we didn’t want to take a risk with him (against Farnborough).
Swanson still ‘primarily’ Pompey right-back
‘And the situation with players in the building means we’re not flush with sixes or eights.
‘We had Doz (Dozzell) playing as a six in the first half and that meant we needed to fill that gap, we have right-backs with Mike (Ani), Jordan (Williams) and Terry (Devlin).
‘It’s the same situation with Terry. We probably see Terry 50-50 really as a right-back and maybe 10 and a bit of an eight.
‘But Terry is slightly different to Zak because he came in originally as a central midfielder.
‘I think going forward we’ll probably see Zak more as a right-back, but what we want to do is make sure he gets the minutes he’s getting - and he has performed very well in midfield.’