Pim has cut striker Scott McDonald, Nick Carle and Jade North.

2-1 two to one 2>1 ... yeah I guess we won but how on earth did we deserve it!

Forgot about Lowry....

Lowry, Carle, Holland.

Will all be announced at 3pm EST.

McDonald will go, Lowry will be left behind. Hopefully Macca doesn't start any WC games, he can't play in Pim's system

The main worry is that Milligan will be going. One of the most overatted players ever.

Mcdonald will be in South Africa.

Not a huge surprise.

Pim wants to take 28 players to SA, so 3 are staying home - MacDonald, Carle, Holland.

I just read in a newspaper that Carle has been dropped from the squad...442 any news on that?

Disagree completely. Culina is the perfect link between defence and attack. No one can command that position like him. Cannot move from DM.

Look we made New Zealand look good last night! Especially in the first half where didnt push up the pitch higher enough,lack of ball speed on the counter, also we didnt presurise them enought when they had the ball, they looked comfortable and controlled the game, and to our own performance, well (sigh) the first half was shit, but the second was alot better when beachy came on, as for culina he shouldnt PLAY DM midfielder anymore id to see him play potentially as our right side attacker against Germany, to me his better when he has more freedom on the park.

I thought Culina was very lively - I didnt see the 1st half - but i reckon he was close to best on ground, but with the statement that we deserved to win , he also picks up the best on microphone !

+1. We also totally destroyed NZ in the second half. We had all the possession.

Don't forget NZ are a WC side, Greece who we only beat 1-0 last WC warm up, weren't even going to the WC. Of course the teams in our group are better than NZ, but lets keep it in perspective. It was just a warm-up, we didn't have our team that will play against Germany, and we still played okay in the second half. Wasn't great, but do we need to be so pessimistic?

how about we look at it this way. we subbed off our big guns, put on a few rookie'ish players and then produced 2 goals to win the game. that's a very good sign in terms of squad depth

@Iinnerwestie and Pims favourites. Heard on the radio his comments about Cahill and Grella's tackles. Something along the lines of it being not acceptable and that if he selects these players he needs to know that he can depend on them otherwise they are no goo d to him. He won't drop Cahill, but I reckon Grella hasn't done himself any good in Verbeek's eyes.

Overall the first half showed just how bad a decision it was to not select Ogga. Who is gonna go up against Zigic, Ivanovic and Vidic when the set piece crosses/corners come in? Ditto Gomez and Klose. Beauchamp?

Nah mate probably having a giggle at full strength Potugal drawing 0-0 with powerhouse Cape Verde!

There are a few issues that worry me with what I am seeing with Pim at the moment

1. I don't think Pim is driven enough: (a) he is quoted a few days ago as saying “friendships” were the most important thing in his career……..hello….what about "success". (b) he is going to morrocco to work in the youth system after the cup. Hardly the sign of a man trying to establish himself as a world class coach…more like an admission that he doesn't have what it takes.

2. I think the first choice 11, are too comfortable with him. They know they will start and Pim is buddy buddy with them all. They need to have credible threats to their postions which pim should re-enforce. Like Guus where everyone had to fight.

But Pim has no incentive to go down this path. Why should Pim upset his start players and go the hard way? He’s got himself another job allready that doesn't depend on his performance at the world cup? Incentives are all misaligned.

It doesn’t look good for South Africa

I don't know how anyone could possibly blame Pim for the first half performance, when so many of the players were just not up to scratch...

However the fact that New Zealand struggled to even get possession of the ball once the Roos had sorted themselves out a bit in the 2nd half, suggests to me that Jason is probably right...

Put it this way, if NZ had of won, would that have been a fair result? I think not.

Haha, we rule. You suck. Suck shit.

It's hard to gauge what will happen in the world cup from this game, Australia were terrible last night and New Zealand were up and down aswell.

As I've said before this was the wrong game to lead up to a world cup for both teams, the positive thing that did come through is that weaknesses were shown up on both sides so something to work on.

If the Kiwi's forward line are able to have a little more control by foot they could cause some problems and if the Aussies can learn how to play against larger forwards they will be fine.

junak... i agree that the aussies are better players.. they are also better hackers and will be out of the world cup one day before NZ...

All the kiwis commenting about how much better NZ were and how Australia are going to struggle at the WC are delusional. I think one of the few positives last night was that the quality of the Aussie players was highlighted against the NZ squad. The sharpness, movement, ball control and technical skill shown by the Aussies was far superior to what the kiwis could ever serve up. It's only a matter of time before the Aussie team as a whole gets their ass into gear.

You gotta be kidding yourself if you think the Aussies are going to struggle like the Kiwi's through the WC.

A draw would have been the fair result. NZ better 1st half, Aus better 2nd half. If I had to pick one I'd say Roos 2nd half was marginally better than NZ's 1st half.

Fair call, his crosses were pretty rubbish. I guess I was more impressed with his running, he really worked hard down the right side and I suppose compared to his first half any performance would have looked better! Don't think he was woeful though

Bollocks. He didnt play a single ball forward to the feet of our strikers, spent too much time hanging out on the wing getting caught in posession and having to play the ball back to his defence. Our strikers had to end up coming deep to get the ball themselves so by the time the ball made it into the box there was no one there on the end of it. He only looked better in the second half because he didnt have Cahill there doing the work for him.

first mistake was allowing them to play out from the back. you let the Cook Islands do this, and eventually they'll look dangerous.

Forgot to mention, this is further proof that a Kiwi side could fare reasonably well in Asia. Might not win the thing, but they'd be competitive.

Australia were not the better team. Better in the second half, but that first half was so bad I can't see many positives for them. I do love it how they mention Aus coming to life in the second half as the Kiwi's went to sleep - coincides reasonably well with when a few Kiwi's got kicked off the park in a very cunning Australian strategy of desperation (looking at you Grella).

So no, this wasn't NZ's best side vs Australia's 2nd side and Aussie one so it's a good sign. Australia will struggle at this rate in all three of their World Cup games while I'm happy to say if NZ can replicate their first half against Slovakia I'd even be confident of a win.

ned7, were you watching mate? Culina was one of our best, if not the best. Obviously his first half was shite, it was the same for the whole team. Culina's first half rating = 5/10, second half rating = 9/10 ... so so 14/20 isn't bad at all. You clearly weren't at the game coz his work rate in the second half was top notch, was the spark we needed going forward and actually provided an attacking option

Australia could not have played much worse in the first half so probably deserved a draw at best. Obviously it doesn't work like that. Anyway the result is not that important. Addressing our problems before the WC kicks off next month is the main thing.

If anything, this further proves that Australia is one of the hardest teams to bear. I have no idea why some people are so shocked at this...We do it time and time again, it's part of the team.
I'd rather be able to win like this when we play in the World Cup, than play amazingly and lose.