Ousmane Dembele is the man to see Barcelona become La Liga and European champions this season

And when he has been able to play, Dembele has largely looked out of place and out of sorts, regularly failing to read his teammates’ intentions and cheaply conceding possession with worrying frequency.

However, last weekend’s thumping home victory over Girona – even though Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez stole the headlines with five of the team’s six goals – could well prove to be a badly-needed turning point for Dembele, who started to look comfortable in a Blaugrana shirt for the very first time.

That wasn’t the case in the first half, when he continued to deliver the kind of disjointed, error-strewn display which marked his first six months as a Barcelona player.

But after the break, it was a different story. Dembele suddenly looked relaxed, made much better use of the ball, gained sufficient confidence to beat his man with silky dribbling skills on more than one occasion, and ended up proving he can also find end product by breaking down the right flank to send over a perfect assist for Suarez’s hat-trick goal.

That was exactly what Dembele needed, and it was exactly what his team needed, because the 20 year-old has a massive role to play in the next few weeks if Barca are to round off their highly promising campaign by claiming the Champions League crown as well as La Liga.

The first leg of Barca’s last 16 tie with Chelsea, even though it produced a favourable outcome, was very worrying for coach Ernesto Valverde and his players, with the London club’s deep and disciplined defending restricting the visitors to just a handful of half-chances.

That was no great surprise because other than Suarez’s bustling centre forward play and the genius of Messi, Barca had very little attacking thrust in their starting eleven at Stamford Bridge – the fact that Jordi Alba, the left-back, is their most dangerous source of penetration, says it all.

Even though Barca escaped with a 1-1 draw thanks to a defensive mistake and are therefore now in prime position to overcome Chelsea, they will need to produce a lot more in attack to have any realistic chance of taking their European campaign all the way.

And Dembele is exactly the man who should be providing the kind of destabilising attacking output so badly missing at Stamford Bridge, with his pace, creativity and ability on the ball capable of giving his team’s attacking play a completely new dimension.

In the circumstances, it’s perfectly understandable that Dembele has taken a long time to settle. He is a young man with no prior experience of Barca’s style of play, and any player would struggle to find rhythm and confidence after spending so long on the sidelines through injury.

Now, though, he is fit and available, and he needs to step up. That can only happen by gaining time on the pitch, and Valverde must make the most of every opportunity to give Dembele the minutes he so badly needs.

The good news is that this doesn’t have to be a season wasted for Dembele. Starting tonight at Las Palmas, Barca have three more league games before the rematch with Chelsea, and then two more before the first leg of the quarter finals.

That’s more than enough time for Dembele, if he keeps playing, to gain more of an understanding with his teammates, improve his match fitness and boost his confidence in exactly the way he started to do during the second half against Girona.

And with so little action under his belt this season, he should then be able to enter the final stages of the campaign in a much fresher physical condition than most players, giving him an automatic advantage over jaded opposition full-backs.

His Barca career has been little short of disastrous so far, but if all goes to plan now Dembele could be the man to make a difference – and turn his team not only into champions of Spain, but also champions of Europe.