'Top-class': Portsmouth's ex-Arsenal youngster backed for a Premier League return after magnificent Spurs showing

The full-back lined-up in a right wing-back role at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in Pompey’s FA Cup third-round encounter on Saturday.

Despite the 1-0 defeat, inflicted by Harry Kane, it was a gutsy, hard-working performance applauded by the 8,880 travelling faithful.

At the heart of it was the outstanding Swanson, who coped magnificently with the threat of Heung-min Son, earning him the man of the match.

And Bassey is expecting the talented former Arsenal youngster to continue flourishing with the Blues.

The caretaker boss told The News: ‘Zak was excellent, I told him at the end that if he plays like that he will play here every week.

‘Probably not at Tottenham because he’s an Arsenal fan, but I thought it was a top-class performance.

‘There’s still lots of work to do, Zak has been a work in progress since the summer. These are the levels, if you play at that level you know what he is capable of.

‘His challenge now is to go again and go again and go again – and I have loads of faith in him to do that.

‘His one-v-one defending against Spurs was excellent. You come to a place like that and have to defend well one-v-one, while his pass selection was good and he played the full game and still had legs in him at the end.

‘It’s hard, he came as a development player, so to speak, we bought in a senior right-back in Joe Rafferty and he’s obviously had his injury problems.

‘Then Zak came into the team and he’s had his injury problems and Kieron (Freeman) has had his injury problems.

‘But to get two back on Saturday, because Kieron was on the bench, is good. And to get Zak playing the way he did is excellent for us.’

Freeman returned to the squad for the first time since collecting an injury at Ipswich in the Papa John’s Trophy in November.

He took his place on a nine-man bench, which also contained youngsters Adam Payce and Josh Dockerill, although none were used.

And with Rafferty set to return in a fortnight, suddenly Pompey have gone from no right-backs to three.

Bassey added: ‘We’ve had to change shape because we haven't had a right-back for 10 games and it has probably affected some of the results we’ve had along the way.

‘We’ve now got flexibility to play a back four, which we would have preferred to play this season, we started the campaign with a back four and did well with it.

‘But we changed out of necessity because we never had a right-back.’