Here is how I see this problem of Semedo.
I think that he has showed thah he is more than capable of playing for us, but i think he will become much more important factor in the future.
I think that his biggest problems that his capabilites are at the moment not what we realy need in current system. We play with 4 midfielder, something we didnt since I dont know when... Primar job of our midfield is to produce stability and protection to our deffence and simply keeping the possession and exhausting and pysiologically irritating oponents. With our long posession, oponents sonner than later loose their patience and then use our wapon. Messi usually finds a hole in deffence and our full backs (Alba and Roberto) explore thoose open spaces. They are extremely good in finding targets in thoose areas close to goal and are master of link up play-- so most our goals come as some surprise factors when they bomb forward. They are not that good in defending, but this is not their main job, cause they have very good cover from our midfilders. Semedo is much better deffender then both of them- 1on1 defending and pure deffensive skills. But in our tactical play we dont need full backs to be extremely good deffender but much more affective in attack. Thats something Semedo lacks... One reason is that he is not used to play with teamates jet, other reason is that we must admid that Roberto and Alba are really worlds best in this part of game.
So as long as we play with this current system Semedo will have "problems". So i believe he will be much more important when we start to play 4-3-3 again with, lets say Griezmann/Suarez-Messi-Dembele. In this system we will be much better offensivly, but much more exposed at the back, and there i see Semedo as our ideal RB. Good on 1-1 defending, with pacey wingers with tons of space. His main job will be deffending. Such as Abidal was. And Abidal would also struggle in our currenty system.
Sooner or later our tactics wont work any more, because opponents will figure out our play and especially when Messi wont be able to carry all of creativity any more. We will need to include both Dembele and Coutinho in line up to help Messi in that aspect, but this brings more unstability. And there I see oportunity for Semedo.
