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Wenger on Bendtner, title race and Hull

Arsene Wenger spoke to the media after Arsenal's 2-0 victory over Hull City. Read the transcript now:

on the performance…
We had a good night because we had a good control of the game. We had some great technical quality and keep a clean sheet. We rotated quite a bit as well. We couldn't take all the chances we created but overall it was a very convincing performance.

on whether playing Bendtner was a gamble…
Look, [it is a gamble] if a guy has not played for a long time, and his last performance was not convincing against Chelsea, but he has worked hard in training and deserved a chance.

"He has the stature, he has good technical quality, he has quite good pace. Look, we had him as a boy of 15 or 16 and I made him sign a long contract twice so that means I always believed in his qualities"

Wenger on Bendtner

on Bendtner proving people wrong…
We know that when he has the mind of the game, he has the qualities. I believe tonight he had a good game.

on Bendtner's future…
At the moment we are not as far as that. He has the stature, he has good technical quality, he has quite good pace. Look, we had him as a boy of 15 or 16 and I made him sign a long contract twice so that means I always believed in his qualities.

on whether he was tempted to play Walcott…
Walcott couldn't practise before we played our last game at Cardiff because he was sick. When we came back on Monday he was sick again, so he just had a little session. In the last week he has not practised at all, so I was never tempted to start him. He has not played for seven weeks and he did very little in the last week. He is not completely ready.

on Man United being 12 points behind…
No [I won't rule them out of the title race]. It's still early. It is a surprising defeat [to Everton] but it is still early. We have seen that before, 12 points, only on us. We have just to keep winning to have a chance, and not worry too much about the others.

on a big week ahead…
We have a very heavy schedule, that's why as well I had to rest some players today and to rotate. Now we play Everton on Sunday, there is little distance between Everton and [the Napoli game]. We play Wednesday night in Naples and Saturday morning at Man City, so for us it is a very very heavy schedule.

on the schedule…
It's not fair or unfair, it is just no co-ordination between the television choices because you would say that we could have played on Saturday against Everton and we could play Sunday or Monday against Man City. It looks strange that we play Saturday morning and our next game after that is Monday night against Chelsea nine days later. Especially when there is little time between a decisive Champions League game on Wednesday night and Saturday 12.45pm.

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