<--- Porto fan
Hulk had a pretty bad game against City this last thursday, not sure if it was because of a recent injury(this game was his 2nd game after recovering from a 1 month injury) or maybe he just got nervous, wanting to show off his skills. The fact that he's being sacrificed by playing on a position he usually doesn't play(striker) also doesn't help.
Trust me, he's not nearly as bad as he seemed to be during this last game, but he's also not worth all the money we are asking for him. When he's playing at his best he can decide a match all by himself, but there are a few matches once in a while where he simply plays really poorly and everyone just wants to scream at him at the end of the game. His best season was last year, he played very consistently but this year, maybe because of the holocaust that has been this season for Porto, he simply can't seem to play well during many matches in a row, either he's the worst of the team or the best.
Next match against City won't probably be the best match to judge him too, Porto is in a very bad condition right now, we are loosing everything, got knocked out of the champions league, 5 points from Benfica in the league and no one seems to be able to stop them, got knocket out of the portuguese cup after being crushed by a poor team like Académica(3-0) and we are about to get knocket out of the Euro League. That 1st half performance by Porto against City was the best performance we had during all these games of the season, that says much about Porto this year.
Our manager is probably the worst manager we had for a long time, everyone can't wait to see him go away after the season is over and start fresh again. Some players wanted to leave the club after last year's success and the sudden departure of AVB completely crushed everyone's ambitions at Porto. Not only that, after seeing Falcao leaving our team, we left the striker position to be occupied by a 20 year old boy who got crushed by the heavy weight of Falcao's inheritance and we have been playing without a striker for the majority of the season. We bought a new striker during January but he can't even play in the Euro League since he had already played for Twente this season.
Then we have players requesting to leave the club because they are dissatisfied for not being in the main 11(Guarin, Iturbe, Walter, Fucile,...), sudden injuries(Danilo and Mangala last game, Hulk, Fernando during a long period), unlucky games where the ball never seems to enter the goal, Benfica never loosing points and we have Porto's team this year, a shadow of the team that played marvelously last year.
History is against Porto, we have never won in England and I can imagine the mind of Porto's players after this last defeat against City, they are about to loose everything this season. Prediction for the next game: City 3-0 Porto.