Nicklas Bendtner stood up to the test for Arsenal when he scored a hat-trick against Porto which ensured that they progress to the last eight of the UEFA Champions League with a 5-0 victory over Porto. Samir Nasri and Emmanuel Eboue grabbed the other 2 goals to end the night of a remarkable comeback after trailing 2-1 at Porto in the first leg.


Bendtner who missed many chances in the Burnley game before coming into this one said “Every time I play a game, I put it behind me as soon as it's finished. Sometimes it's one of those days and today I put it right. I'm happy with my hat-trick but tomorrow we move on. It was good to score early but I don't know if that affected my game."

Arsene Wenger, the manager surely felt that his faith in Bendtner paid off saying that "I hope it will not give him too much confidence. It's good for him. He played well on Saturday but missed chances. Today he had less chances and scored more goals. I hope it gives him the desire to work even harder. It's never perfect but it was a very good performance, a strong performance. We had a very good first half, suffered a bit at the beginning of the second half, but after the goal of Nasri it made a big difference and from then it was easy. It was individual brilliance (from Nasri) but overall we had a solid team performance, we were serious, had good solidarity and, as we can play, a fluid game."


On whether he want to meet any English teams in the next round, he said "I have a funny feeling maybe it's good for us to play and English team. We have not done well against Chelsea and against Man U this year and it would be a good chance to show we can do it against them."