Ousmane Dembele's move to Barcelona was supposed to be the next step on his path to the top of football after a brilliant season with Borussia Dortmund.

So far, however, the Frenchman has only gone backwards, dropping in and out of the side and only showing his ability on rare occasions.

Ernesto Valverde even left him out of the squad entirely for a recent game with Real Betis after he failed to show for training.

Dembele has now been linked with moves away from Barcelona, with several teams feeling La Liga's champions may cut their losses.

That would have been seen as unthinkable back in September 2017 - he was one of their two replacements for Neymar, after all.

But it does look like Barca are still going to do what they can to keep Dembele at the club and make things work.

They will, however, be asking three things of the 21-year-old before committing to him.

According to Marca, Barcelona's President, Josep Bartomeu, met with Dembele's agent, Moussa Sissoko on Monday.

Such was the importance of the meeting that Bartomeu brought along Technical Secretary Eric Abidal and Sporting Director Pep Segura.

Barca then laid out their three demands to Dembele's agent: that the player should hold a more professional attitude, that he turns up to training on time, and that he immediately attempts to integrate with the squad more.

Marca claim that Dembele only really talks with fellow Frenchman Samuel Umtiti and Clement Lenglet, due to the fact that he still only speaks very basic Spanish.

In return, Sissoko laid out one request from the player's side: that the club stop leaking negative stories about Dembele.

Their reasoning for the request is that it damages his image and, should Barca try to sell him, it would hurt his chances of securing a move elsewhere.

The meeting appears to have come to logical conclusions - only time will tell if it's enough to save Dembele's Barcelona career.