Football managers don’t generally like to talk about the future. No doubt this is partly because the present is often so all-consumingly traumatic; and beyond that because as John Maynard Keynes – himself once a Chelsea resident – pointed out, in the long term we’re all sacked. With this in mind, it isn’t hard to find a reason why Chelsea and homegrown players have scarcely figured in the same paragraph in recent times.

Ten managers in 10 years tells its own story on that front, as does a current squad that, for all their tangible strengths, still gives the impression of having been hurled together at speed, a high-class jambalaya of leftovers and prize cuts assembled by successive occupants of the managerial equivalent of the Spinal Tap drummer’s stool.

And yet, it seems, this may now be about to change. This 3-1 defeat of Sporting Lisbon may have been just a half-dead rubber at the fag end of Champions League Group G, notable for some solid performances from André Schürrle and Kurt Zouma and a sensational second-half tap in by Mikel Jon Obi, his fifth goal in eight years.

But Chelsea will hope it might end up providing a moment of more profound significance in the shape of a widely trailed first-team debut for the 18‑year‑old academy graduate Ruben Loftus-Cheek, who came on for Cesc Fàbregas for the final seven minutes at Stamford Bridge wearing shirt No36. There was just time for a loud introductory cheer, a first ever chant of “Ruben”, and a first touch that brought a nice pass out to César Azpilicueta followed by a lung-busting run to the opposition box. With the final whistle looming Loftus-Cheek managed to hit the side netting from a tight angle (he was offside).

“Everyone in the stadium had the feeling we have a kid with talent,” said José Mourinho. “So keep going, keep working hard, and hopefully people around him don’t disturb the work we are doing with him. I said to him: ‘I gave you this, you have to give me a nice bottle of red wine.’ He said immediately: ‘No problem.’”

Loftus-Cheek is an intriguing prospect, whatever the wider picture, a 6ft 4in central midfielder of considerable long-striding grace who has been at Chelsea since 2004, the same year Mourinho himself arrived, and a captain through the age groups for Chelsea and England. Encouragingly he also seems a natural fit in a position English players have struggled to fill, a shielding, covering, deep-playmaking presence with a calmness in possession and a naturally telescopic reach.

This is, Chelsea will hope, part of a wider picture as the first graduates of a revamped development system have begun to appear this season on the edge of the first-team squad, cautiously at first, like rabbits in the tree-line. The 19-year‑old Dutchman Nathan Aké has already played three times, while Loftus-Cheek, Lewis Baker, Dominic Solanke and Isaiah Brown are among those Mourinho was referring to when he said earlier this season he would have failed in his duties if at least some of the current crop of José’s Ducklings aren’t playing for England before long.

This is more than just hopeful talk. At lunchtime on Wednesday Chelsea’s hugely promising juniors beat their Sporting equivalents 6-0 at Cobham in the Uefa Youth League, Solanke scoring a hat‑trick. Progress from that level is always oblique and fraught with uncertainty – just ask Josh McEachran – but for now these are riches indeed.

For all that, there is plenty of ground to make up in this regard. Of the 10 starting outfield players here only Mikel has been at the club more than two seasons. Indeed if this Chelsea team had the immediate future in mind, it was just the need to draw breath and patch up the odd wound after the first few jolts and bumps in the Premier League had exposed the only real weakness in this team.

There is, for all Chelsea’s expert possession play, a slight weakness in central midfield, where the neat if at times near-immobile Mikel is several rungs below Nemanja Matic, and where Chelsea have at times been stretched when Fàbregas gets too far ahead of the ball.

Here Mourinho sent his team out with a more conservative Mikel-Matic double-pivot in central midfield and Fàbregas playing ahead as a roving No10. With Mikel lurking, Matic had the freedom to stride forward and play in Schürrle for Chelsea’s second goal after 16 minutes, Fàbregas having earlier converted a penalty.

By the time Loftus-Cheek had come on, Mikel had re-established the two-goal cushion after Jonathan Silva had pulled one back.

And from a wider angle, there is a degree of intrigue here for Mourinho too. Among the assorted gripes occasionally levelled at Chelsea’s manager is the suggestion he has no real concerted record of developing young players to first-team level, certain high-profile cases aside. The charge is that for all his compelling success in building teams, whether from scraps or hand-picked A-listers, a Mourinho team is always a bolted-together affair, a work of pragmatism.

Unlike Louis van Gaal or Pep Guardiola there is as yet no great Mourinho legacy of nurturing rather than assembling a team, no José’s Ducklings, rug rats grown to maturity in his image. Perhaps there is even a possibility – never mind that third Champions League medal – that this has occurred even to the arch pragmatist himself as a missing tick on his managerial CV.

More sensibly Chelsea’s current emphasis on youth is simply evidence of good managerial sense, of operating prudently within Uefa rules, and an acknowledgement of the fact that often the most successful clubs function best with a core of their own players. Loftus-Cheek may have flickered only briefly, if strikingly, here. But there will, as a matter of policy, be a few more opportunities for Chelsea’s younger players in a future that looks at the very least a little more intriguing after Wednesday night.