Porto have been trying to recreate the magic of the tyro Villas-Boas's season in charge but Paulo Fonseca is struggling and beginning to bear the brunt of unhappy supporters' frustration

At the final whistle at the Estádio do Dragão on Tuesday night, the boos were loud, and prolonged. Porto's failure to beat Austria Vienna has left them on the brink of group stage elimination from the Champions League, and coach Paulo Fonseca is beginning to bear the brunt of unhappy supporters' frustration.

This is a club that habitually makes history, as their newly opened museum at the Dragão is so keen to tell us. Tuesday's draw created a new, unwanted piece. For the first time in 20 group stage campaigns, Porto had failed to win any of their three home games.

"I'm not running away from my responsibilities," Fonseca said after the game. Porto are still top of the Liga by a point, but his counterpart Jorge Jesus's own difficulties at Benfica have made a big contribution to that. Fonseca is likely to have time to correct a stutter that now stretches to only two wins in seven games. The veteran president Jorge Nuno Pinto da Costa does not like to fire coaches mid-season – the Spaniard Víctor Fernández was the last, in January 2005 during the topsy-turvy season that followed José Mourinho's exit – but the current incumbent's struggles must be making him twitchy.

Fonseca's appointment, on the back of his truly remarkable achievement of taking tiny Paços de Ferreira into the Champions League play-off round, polarised opinion. The 40-year-old was a typically forward-thinking appointment by Pinto da Costa, thought some, epitomising Porto's capacity to self-reinvent. Others believed he was an unnecessary risk.

What most can agree on is that it was a deliberate attempt to ape the club's last great head coach appointment, that of André Villas-Boas, back in June 2010. Let's not be revisionist; appointing a man with only nine months of top-flight management experience at Académica was seen as a huge punt at the time in Portugal. It worked out, of course, to spectacular effect, and ever since he left, Porto have been trying to recreate the magic of the tyro's season in charge.

Yet it is becoming clearer and clearer that there is, in fact, only one André Villas-Boas. He may be under intense scrutiny in the Premier League at the moment, but the mark he left in that one campaign at the Dragão is indelible.

Villas-Boas created an ebullience on and off the pitch that few have seen at the club before – and certainly not since. Besides winning the Europa League, they obliterated a very good Benfica side domestically, both in league and cup, with an irresistible ruthlessness. That's what made his departure for Chelsea such a wrench, but the bad feeling was limited, despite what was publicly communicated at the time. Porto played the victims of course, with their hands technically tied by Villas-Boas's release clause being met. In reality, the receipt of a €15m compensation fee for a coach was an astonishing result even for a club of their skill in the transfer market.

The 36-year-old has never really left the Dragão's good books. He has returned as a guest at the club's annual award night, Os Dragões de Ouro (The Golden Dragons), in both editions since his departure – he received clubman of the year for his work as head coach, despite leaving – and often drops into his old club on visits back to his home city.

Having made such a mess of Mourinho's succession (Luigi Delneri was fired before taking charge of an official match, leading to Fernández's appointment), Pinto da Costa had acted quickly to try to cling on to the Villas-Boas magic when his departure was confirmed. AVB's assistant, Vítor Pereira, was appointed to the role mere hours later. In a theatrical press conference, it was also revealed that Pereira would have an €18m release clause in his deal.

The subsequent months revealed Pereira to be very much the second prize. He had none of his old boss's magnetism off the pitch and his (very talented) team played with little personality on it, toppling out of the Champions League at the group stage in 2011-12. Pereira won the title in both of his campaigns at the helm – with no little help from Benfica's chokes – but the limp exit to Málaga in last season's Champions League was the straw that broke the camel's back.

The capture of Fonseca was meant to add that extra spark, by opting for an exciting young coach (even though he is seven years older than Villas-Boas was when he got the job). He is indeed that. He is not, however, Villas-Boas. Fonseca's management of his squad has been questioned and the football has been stodgy.

There is a sense that the saudade – roughly translated, a sense of longing – is not entirely one-sided. As time passes, the prevailing feeling in Portugal at the time that Villas-Boas was leaving the Dragão a year earlier than either he or Porto would have ideally desired is one that repeatedly pops back into the mind.

Certainly, it would have been something to see him take Hulk, João Moutinho and company into the Champions League, with the same flair with which they blazed a trail to the competition's little brother. He would have enjoyed it. Nowhere has he enjoyed the same authority or unconditional buy-in to his ideas from players as at Porto. Neither Porto, nor Villas-Boas, have ever quite recovered the extraordinary feeling of that heady spring of 2011.