I like her too, she has character!!! But tbh she could have been used a bit better :D
Her problem was, that she was full of self, like she was thinking that she is better than Naruto and strong kunoichi, which wasn't even half true. Like if we put Sakura from chunin exam against Hinata, Sakura would lose been beating hardly.
So main problem of Sakura comes from fact that she was lazy, always depend on others, even if she say that she want to be strong, that was somewhat a lie. In the end she copied techniques from Tsunade, didn't do anything by herself, didn't create any jutsu. And you know, that is not Kishi fault, it was all about Sakura character.
Ofcourse Kishi could do better job with her, but that attitude suits to Sakura...she was written like that from the begining. So I believe it was hard for Kishimoto make her stronger....case Sakura is not like that, yes she was not worst in knowledge at school, but she also wasn't the best. She got weak sides, but instead of working on em, becaming stronger....she was doing girl things. And there was only factor that push her farher from another weak chunin - her character, that do not want to lose Naruto and Sasuke, feeling that she was worse and weakest. But that obviosly not enough...this is not the real reason why people became stronger, smarter...it's just lazy try to justify your state.
In that terms, I feel like, if Hinata was MC from the begining, maybe even her character herself let Kishimoto push her farther, and making great female MC character. She is the one who is trying to be stronger, not for Naruto, but for herself. She is not lazy, and always tried hard in her training etc. I feel like if she was MC, Hinata could became really strong, maybe just a bit weaker than Naruto and Sasuke, case her inherit gens from Kaguya.
Even worse pairing than Sakura x Sasuke.
