In January 2016 Kyle Walker-Peters had a decision to make. Tottenham had agreed that he could join up with Roda JC, a lower mid-table side in the Dutch top flight, on their mid-season training camp in Portugal. Both parties would spend the week looking at one another with the idea of coming to a loan arrangement and, all being well, it would bring a first taste of competitive senior football to a player still three months short of his 19th birthday.

A temporary move never materialised and the suggestion when Walker-Peters returned to London was that the number of high balls Roda played was a stumbling block for the right-back. Any fit has to be an appropriate one so instead he slotted back into Spurs’ under-21 side, where he had stood out in the previous 12 months, continued working and waited for his chance.

It finally came at Newcastle on Sunday and Walker-Peters’ patience could hardly have been better rewarded. He played with the energy and clarity that have become the hallmarks of this Tottenham side and, even if the man-of-the-match award after their 2-0 win was perhaps generous, his performance left little doubt that all those hours spent working to Mauricio Pochettino’s template had been well spent.

Walker-Peters operated just as Pochettino asks his full-backs to, wide and high, supporting the attack sensibly while dealing tenaciously enough with the occasional threat posed by Christian Atsu. It was not swashbuckling stuff but it was composed and competent; after a buildup dominated by the frustrations of Danny Rose, there was plenty to be said for such a lack of fuss.

The timing of his debut provided an instructive glimpse of the way Tottenham handle their young talent nowadays. While it is true that Walker-Peters benefited from Kieran Trippier’s injury, sustained against Juventus the previous week, and the departure of his near-namesake Kyle Walker, it is equally fair to say Pochettino had planned on having him around.

“We expect that they will be involved next season more than they were this season,” he said in May of Walker-Peters and two of his peers, Josh Onomah and Cameron Carter-Vickers. Walker-Peters had been integrated into the first-team squad as 2016-17 progressed, sitting on the substitutes’ bench for the FA Cup wins over Aston Villa and Wycombe, and the current campaign was always likely to be an important one for his prospects.

That is particularly the case because it may raise an eyebrow that, at 20, he had needed to wait so long for any kind of league football. He is at an age by which many footballers have already been swilled around the loan system several times, and one by which those at the Premier League’s bigger clubs generally tend to risk dropping through the cracks if they have not made some kind of first-team bow. But Pochettino prefers to keep his better young players close; when Football League sides expressed interest in borrowing Walker-Peters last season, with Wigan Athletic among those interested, Tottenham said no. He was far closer to a breakthrough than he had been at the time of the Roda trial and the priority was to steep the player in Pochettino’s methods.

A similar approach worked in the case of Harry Winks, who was 18 when he made his Tottenham debut but did not start a Premier League game until six weeks short of his 21st birthday. Winks was never loaned out either and was ready to fit in seamlessly when fully involved last season. The likelihood is that Walker-Peters will be given the opportunity to establish himself similarly, probably as Trippier’s understudy initially but – given the workload demanded of Spurs full-backs – rotated into the side often enough to complete his step up.

He began his football life as an attacker and shone in Spurs’ age-group teams through his speed and verve; the aim will be to bring more of that out of him after a debut that was understandably conservative when he neared the box. It may eventually be to his advantage, particularly if Rose’s situation sours further, that he is able to play on the opposite flank too.

Walker-Peters’ emergence is the latest positive reflection on a Tottenham academy whose fruits were available for wider perusal during the summer when he and Onomah both played important roles in England’s Under-20 World Cup win, the midfielder Marcus Edwards also featuring in an equally successful Uefa Under-19 Championship run.

Onomah, now 20 as well, has since gone on loan to Aston Villa; Edwards, compared to a young Lionel Messi by Pochettino, played against Gillingham in last season’s League Cup at the age of 17. There remain high hopes for the centre-back Cameron Carter-Vickers, who has represented the USA youth sides, while the flair of the 18-year-old forward Samuel Shashoua has already sustained several YouTube showreels.

It is Walker-Peters who currently occupies the limelight, though, and perhaps it was clever of Pochettino to state before the Newcastle game that a start for the youngster might be “too much for him”.

Whether that was intended to manage external expectations or ensure the appropriate response from his player, the tactic paid off. Any doubts about Walker-Peters’ stomach for the battle may have been erased within six seconds of kick-off, when he challenged Ayoze Pérez for a Jonjo Shelvey diagonal and, his 5ft 9in frame leaping high against the Newcastle striker, came out comfortably on top. Working with Roda’s long balls may have been too much but Pochettino seems to have had the right effect all on his own.