Supposedly Keegan demolished the reserve team because he threw a tantrum at being told the youth team had to play matches on the senior home pitch. Now he was probably right, it was a ridiculous rule. Plus for anyone who went to our games at the time, our pitch was in such a state that you had literally dozens of people on the pitch at half time replacing divots. However it was a very poor decision. We lost a lot of players because of it. You had youth set players like Carrick feeling they had nowhere to go, and useful squad players like Huckerby and Guppy having no way of maintaining match fitness.
He did also think the league was sub standard and it was eventually replaced by the U21 league.
The Ardiles example is good one nonetheless however. It took a crisis of a situation at the club for us to blood some youth. We were richly rewarded. Elliott, Watson, Howey, Clark were all useful first team squad members under Keegan. Amazing what happens when you take a chance. Watto was only 16 on debut. In fact I think Elliott, Thompson, Howey, and Clark were all about 17.