Wenger salutes fantastic Fàbregas

Manager Arsène Wenger hailed the "complete performance" of Cesc Fàbregas as Arsenal FC recovered from Saturday's surprise domestic defeat to register three UEFA Champions League Group G points with an emphatic defeat of FC Porto. Wenger is now targeting first place in the section, while his counterpart Jesualdo Ferreira pointed to the opportunities his side spurned before Robin van Persie opened the scoring for the hosts, saying: "This could have changed the game."
 
Arsène Wenger, Arsenal manager
That's what we expected. We scored four and could have maybe got a few more but it was most important to win the game quickly, in a convincing way, and that's what we did. You sometimes give the team a chance to respond quickly, and we needed to do that as a team. We were sometimes a bit too tense at the start but we were focused. That, whether it is in the Premier League or Champions League, is vital and on Saturday we were caught by a lack of that. The team is maturing; there is a big potential in the side but we want to be intelligent and in the end you measure that by how well we do together.
 
[Fàbregas] was outstanding tonight, he was good defensively and offensively, and overall it was a complete performance. Theo [Walcott] was dangerous again, he is making big progress and improvement, and the two strikers scored. It was the response I wanted. We want to win our home games. We've taken a point in Kiev and will go to Fenerbahçe and try to win the game, like we always do anywhere we go. We expect to win the group.
 
Jesualdo Ferreira, Porto coach
Of course we knew about the difficulties we would face. Arsenal are a great team. They play a short game with a lot of combinations and they do it everywhere, in the league or in the Champions League, against every opponent. I remember last time we were here. They still have the know-how and experience. Most teams have a lot of difficulties playing here. We tried to get the best out of the game. When the [first] goal came we had already had two chances and that could have changed the game. We had the dangerous opportunities and tried to believe in what were were doing. The team tried to do the best they could and create difficulties for Arsenal. In the next few months we will have to be a strong team. We could have lost 1-0 or 4-0 that wouldn't have changed anything. We are still second in the group and we'll work very hard, do everything to win our next game and achieve our objectives. In the next match we will have a team which is more experienced than it was today. 

It's a normal process to learn from your mistakes. They created a lot of difficulties for us but we will not accept that we weren't good enough. We will do everything for the next match. The first goal could have been ours but everything we could say about how [the result] could have been different is of no use to us – we had opportunities but did not score. We had some confidence but lost it after the first goal. What we did here today was negative when you look at the result, but positive as we did some good things and can learn from it.