"I thought they played ever so well, their football deserves better than the Second Division," said Keegan.
"I've been in that division with Fulham and their football's quicker, they deserve to do better."
"I've put my best team out and we just scraped through past Crewe, a Second Division club.
"The last thing we said was don't give away an early goal - and we had hardly got sat down before we were one down.
"I guess the winners were the 21,000 that came here tonight, there won't be many better attendances in the Worthington Cup and both managers will say there were pluses and minuses from the game, which there certainly were for me.
"Huckerby and Shaun Wright-Phillips definitely gave us an injection of pace and livened us up, a few of us before then were running out of ideas, which is unlike us, and I think we got away with it tonight."