Arsenal FC manager Arsène Wenger played down talk of perfection but nevertheless reflected on "a very good performance" as Nicklas Bendtner scored a hat-trick in a 5-0 defeat of FC Porto which spectacularly overturned a 2-1 first-leg deficit. The Frenchman is already looking ahead to the 19 March draw for the quarter-finals, and a potential meeting with another English club; opposite number Jesualdo Ferreira could only look back and pinpoint Arsenal's ruthlessness as the source of his team's demise.
Arsène Wenger, Arsenal manager
It's never perfect but that was a very good performance, very strong. We had a very good first half. They played well for ten to 15 minutes at the start of the second, but after Nasri scored the third goal that made a big difference; from then on it was easy. Nasri's goal was individual brilliance but overall it was a good, solid team performance.
The hat-trick shows how quickly football changes. [Bendtner] played well on Saturday without scoring and had less chances today and scored three goals. I hope it will give him the desire to work even harder. I don't know [about the quarter-finals] but have a funny feeling that it would be good for us to play an English team. We haven't done well against Chelsea and Man United this year and it would be a good opportunity to put that right.
Jesualdo Ferreira, Porto coach
We started well but Arsenal capitalised on our mistakes. The result looks harsh given how the game developed; they took advantage of almost all their chances and we didn't take advantage of ours. We had to do what we could because at this stage it's about goals and not points. We had to attack to try to score but this made it easy for them to take advantage as they're a very talented and mature squad.
We could have closed down the spaces and defended better but we had to play our game and push. We made mistakes which were unusual for this team but we were never lucky at crucial moments and they didn't make the same mistakes we did.
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