Nic proving his klas

Nicholas: Backing Bendtner

Nasri was absolutely magnificent. The goal he scored was breathtaking, it really was individual quality at the highest.

Charlie Nicholas
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• Arsenal

Charlie Nicholas paid tribute to some fine individual performances in the Arsenal side as the Londoners took apart Porto 5-0 at the Emirates.

Trailing 2-1 from the first leg of their Champions League last 16 tie, Arsenal needed to be strong in attack and defence if they were to progress and they duly obliged by netting five times without reply.

Nicklas Bendtner opened the scoring after just 10 minutes and completed a hat-trick in injury time to put paid to stinging criticism aimed at him over the weekend - the perfect response as far as Nicholas was concerned.

"It's a great story for the lad, he gets battered pillar to post from the media boys and from some of the Arsenal fans and then the boy gets a hat-trick," Nicholas told Tuesday night's Soccer Special panel.

Breathtaking

Nicholas was also suitably impressed with the performance of Samir Nasri who managed to excel even with the weight of Cesc Fabregas' absence on his shoulders.

"Nasri was absolutely magnificent. The goal he scored was breathtaking, it really was individual quality at the highest," Nicholas added.

"Porto certainly threatened at the start of the second half and it took the third goal, a goal of real quality to finish it."

However, as Nicholas suggests, it was not all plain sailing for Arsenal and the game might easily have swung in Porto's favour had the away side taken their chances shortly after the break

"It was a slow start in the second half, and once Arsenal had got 2-0 up you thought 'just take control, take the sting out of the game and just let Porto run and chase'," continued Nicholas.

"Arsenal are good at picking off people like that, but they got really, really slack. There were a few question marks against some of them at times."