Oh look, someone actually reads this, I thought this was only my monologue.
Looks like Bebe is having fantastic season at Pacos, scored some fantastic goals and IIRC he is Portugal's top scorer (only Portuguese player in the league).
Also Jackson Martinez averages 135 mins per goal playing for arguably the best team and as CF, Bebe averages 185 mins per goal playing for arguable the worst team in the league and as winger or wide forward.
It´s no that hard to be the portuguese top striker, considering the opposition. Porto, Benfica and Sporting don´t have any portuguese strikers. Benfica doesn´t even have a portuguese winger that plays regularly. Porto has Quaresma who´s only here for 3 months and Varela is a true winger, he doesn´t score that much. Sporting have 2 portuguese wingers but Mané (great prospect) only started playing regularly a couple of months ago and the other isn´t a regular 1st team player.
The only decent portuguese striker we have is Éder from Braga who had 2 serious injuries this season and isn´t playing ATM.
With that in mind Bebe is doing great at Paços I´d say that apart from Benfica he´d start on every team here. His last goals have been true wonder goals but it´s not just that, he´s a constant threat, his speed, acceleration and power shots make him incredibly dangerous on a team that plays like Paços, on the opposition mistakes. He also improved a lot his finishing, even though he still needs to work on that, that and on his crosses.
Paços have a good team, with a lot of talented players but they started of badly, I´ve wrote about that on the first pages of this thread, changed the coach, who after a few weeks had put almost all the players against him due to his public criticism on them. Now Jorge Costa (Porto legend, remember him?) is in front of the team and changed the formation to a more suiting role of the most dangerous players they have up front, Del Valle and Bebe. They play together on the attack on a hybrid 4-4-2, they have free roles, both play on the center on paper but it´s on the wings that they are really dangerous, there and when doing diagonal to the center. They combine really well between them so I´d say that´s the main reason for their recent success.
Jackson and all of Porto has gone down the shitter since Quaresma came back. Dude is way too selfish. The best Free kicker on that team is Quintero. Both times they got a direct free kick against Napoli Quaresma took the kick instead of Quintero. Quaresma couldn't even get it over the wall. Dude doesn't pass. That and Varela FING SUCKS !! Quintero should start over Quaresma and #11 Gilas or something is much better than Varela.
Letting go of Lucho Gonzalez for Quaresma was the worst decision they could have done. Probably should have gotten AVB instead of promoting the youth coach like they did
Reading just from what you said it seems that Quaresma is the main reason we started losing points so often, and that´s just not the case. We all know Quaresma, he loses a lot of balls and everything but the main reasons were the ones I have been pointing since before the beginning of the season, the midfield didn´t work, everyone was aware of that apart from the coach. The main reason for me was the poor performance of our defense, that adding to the clueless form of play from the midfield, we conceded so many goals, in 13 games from the beginning of January till the time PF was sacked we conceded 15 goals, and 2 of those 13 games were cup games against lower division teams. Almost all those goals came from individual mistakes from our defenders, it was getting ridiculous.
But I give you 100% reason on the FK department , it´s beyond me how the hell Quaresma keeps on taking free kicks when Quintero is on the field, he´s our best taker since I remember watching Porto play and it´s been 20 years. Quaresma = ball on the wall or ball on the stands. Quaresma is not even on the top 3 of our best free kick takers but he takes them anyway.
Varela is just an OK player but everybody is always too hard on him, before we got Quaresma he was the only true winger to play regularly, and he played all the time, even injured, obviously he´s in bad shape due to that, he´s good when on top form, on the kind of form he´s now he´s not able to add anything to the attacking fase of the team, he just keeps the full backs from attacking.
Quintero can´t start over Quaresma, PF tried him several times on the wing and he was awful, the idea was to put him on a similar role that Hulk and James had before, a winger that cuts for the middle to shoot with the left foot, in theory it could work but on the field he disappeared every time he played like that, he lacks the speed and also he can´t defend there. IMO he needs to play in the midfield to try and get that last pass or shot that he does so well, he needs to improve as soon as possible his work rate and positioning without the ball, he´s great with the ball but far from convincing on the other departments, but he´s still very young to get there.
Ghillas is great, I really like the guy, but he´s a striker, and with Jackson there he doesn´t stand a chance, Porto also is trying to score a big sale with Jackson so that´s one reason why even on the games that Jackson was far from being good enough he didn´t play, our new coach plays him on the wing more due to the lack of good alternatives then anything.
When we sold Lucho for us it was our way of our president say, "Ok this season is over, we´ll try to be as good as we can and start working on the next season" there´s no other explanation, and he wanted to leave, some said he didn´t agree with the coachs view of the team but didn´t want to create tension and turn the back on the coach, not sure if that is true or not.
Then he received a fantastic offer from Dubai and left. It was truly unexpected.
In short the team was playing worse and worse every game, the players were getting tired of the coach and his useless tactics, the defeat against Benfica was hard on the team and was the decisive turning point, injuries, suspensions, fatigue and bad results did the rest. Now the team is really tired, we don´t have a good squad this year, we play the same 14/15 players over and over again, we only have the cups to try and save the season, we´ll no be able to even get the 2nd place this year.
AVB, no thanks, the guy stabbed us on the back, twice, some wanted him back, others don´t, we was great when he was here but I don´t want him again, even if I did he wouldn´t come anyway.
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