Ousmane Dembele arrives late to rescue Barcelona and make a point to his critics

Ousmane Dembele turned up late on Saturday, but this time everybody was happy.

Earlier in the summer, Gerard Pique had joked that the French winger was “always late” for training. And on the Thursday before the international break, he had not shown up at all.

Speaking ahead of Barcelona's game against Atletico Madrid, Ernesto Valverde said it was “difficult to find” a player like him. On that Thursday a couple of weeks ago, the club could not find him for an hour and a half and a series of unwanted headlines followed.

It has not been pleasant and even Valverde described media treatment of his player as “vicious” in Friday’s pre-match press conference. On Saturday, the coach sent on his much-maligned young player and for the fifth time this season, Dembele dag Barca out of a hole.

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When he ran on with 10 minutes remaining, Barca were behind. But as he left the pitch a little under a quarter of an hour later, he had earned his side a valuable draw.

That is seven points he has claimed for his team in this season alone – after just 13 rounds of matches. No other player has contributed as many and newspaper headlines spoke of “forgiveness” and “punishment lifted” after his heroics at the Wanda Metropolitano.

But at the age of 21, occasional indiscipline is to be expected and the pros are clearly far outweighing the cons. “Dembele is a great player,” Valverde said afterwards. “He has so many things, including goals.”

Nevertheless, the youngster has yet to fully gain his coach’s trust and there is the feeling that, despite his important strikes, he is still not quite on the same wavelength with the rest of his team-mates, not quite in tune with the team's style of play.

“Whether he is given more minutes or not depends on him,” Valverde added. “On what he shows in training.”

That was another clear hint that the player can give more and yet, even with everything that has happened so far, he has proved an invaluable influence on the pitch.

The Frenchman now has seven goals in his 16 appearances this season and five of those have been decisive. After winners against Sevilla (in the Spanish Supercopa), Valladolid and Real Sociedad (both in La Liga) earlier on in the campaign, he has added late levellers versus Rayo Vallecano and now Atletico in recent weeks. For a player supposedly nowhere near his potential, he is not doing badly at all.

His price tag - an initial €105million potentially rising to €145m (£128.2m) with add-ons - is perhaps part of the problem, while he may also have been targeted due to the colour of his skin. Certainly, his misdemeanours off the pitch have not warranted the criticism he has had to endure.

Without the seven points he has won for Barca, the champions would be way off the pace in La Liga this season. Instead, they are in pole position and remain ahead of Atletico.

Diego Simeone has yet to beat Barcelona in La Liga in his tenure at the club and again came close here. Asked afterwards what had been lacking to secure an elusive win over the Catalans, he smiled and said: “Four minutes!”

That was the time remaining in the match when Dembele struck to cancel out Diego Costa’s opener in a tight, tactical contest which was later described by Sergio Busquets as “not fun”.

Losing would have been even less fun for Barca, but Dembele ensured that did not happen with a cool finish from a Lionel Messi pass.

It was the kind of late arrival the club will be happy to see and if he can keep up this knack of rescuing the team for the rest of the season, he could be the difference between winning La Liga or ending up empty-handed in May. So surely it is time to leave him alone