LaLiga: Three reasons why Ousmane Dembele must play a key role this season for Barcelona

#1 He offers a diversity to Barcelona's game

Dembele is a pacy winger

Barcelona's unprecedented success over the last 15 years has been largely built on a possession-based tiki-taka style of football.

While this brand of football has won the club numerous titles, its predictable nature means that when teams find them out (albeit very rarely), Barcelona do not have an alternative plan, and find themselves passing the ball around and sideways without any real penetration rather frustratingly to their fans.

Ousmane Dembele would help counter the threat of teams who sit deep and allow Barcelona have possession, as his pacy nature and direct running style offers Barcelona an alternative attacking option, giving opposition managers a different threat to worry about.

Most of Barcelona's signings in the last couple of seasons have sought to address the one-dimensional nature of the club's play, with Arturo Vidal, Paulinho, Malcom and to a lesser extent Phillippe Coutinho all antithesis of Barcelona's patient building style, and in Dembele, they have a reliable counter-attacking weapon, which Valverde could use to devastating effect.