Dembele was one of the most press resistant footballers you'll see, you could put him in a cage with 5 other fellas and - on his good day - it would take them 10 minutes to get the ball off him. Having a player like him to take the ball in any situation was incredibly useful.
But he was and has become the most over hyped legend of any spurs player I can remember.
Superior to Modric ? Hoddle ? Ardiles ? Ridiculous.
Fans love a dribbler, but his passing was perfunctory at best, and I'm not talking about assists and through balls, I'm talking about general incisiveness and passing through midfield lines. He was often very slow to release the ball, and when he did it was incredibly safe. Many occasions where he slowed transition, not enabled it. There's nothing wrong with that when you have others around taking risks, and when it was all clicking for us, and people like Eriksen to take the ball off him and actually be incisive it was a great blend, but lets not pretend his ability with the ball was close to people like Modric, Hoddle, Ardiles - all of whom were press resistant as well as being able to see incisive passes and deliver them, and quickly. Ardiles and Modric also grafted and were much more dynamic around the pitch than Dembele.
He only played about 50% of available (PL) minutes for spurs (8975 minutes - Modric 7933 minutes) And everyone seems to forget the many phases where he was coming back from his chronic injury and he would take about a month to get back up to speed (and his speed was never exactly "speed") and he'd get caught dawdling on the ball or be off the pace.
That Juve game someone posted above is a great example of bad Dembele as well as good, he was like a turtle in a windsock for the first half hour - getting caught messing about and unable to track runners - and by the time that 30 minutes was over, we were two nil down and the tie effectively lost.
he had some great attributes, and when part of the right blend was really good, but he needed that blend as much as that blend needed him.