SO England are out of Euro 2004 and in some quarters the knives are already out for Sven Goran Eriksson.

People are asking the question: Is Sven really the man to lead England to World Cup glory in two years' time?

In my book, that's a difficult one to answer.

On the one hand, England have failed to live up to our expectations once again after exiting a major tournament at the quarter final stages.

But on the other, Eriksson's record as England manager compares favourably with many of his European counterparts.

And in the Swede's defence, there were mitigating circumstances behind our defeat to Portugal last week.

At the end of the day, you need a fair slice of luck to win any major tournament and England's appeared to be out in the Estadio da Luz last Thursday.

To lose Wayne Rooney through injury so early in the game was a crushing blow.

But people have also forgotten that Sven lost Ledley King on the morning of the match.

And the less said about Urs Meier's decision to rule out Sol Campbell's late winner, the better.

Aside from that, I also think Sven made some poor substitutions.

David Beckham should have been hauled off instead of Steven Gerrard but unlike his Portuguese counterpart, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Sven didn't have the bottle to make a difficult decision.

I know he has this cool veneer 90 per cent of the time but sometimes I just wish he would wear his heart on his sleeve a bit more and show some real emotion when the chips are down.

Anyway, regardless of what Sven did and didn't do, it was a desperately disappointing way to go out in the end.

Up to last Thursday, we were looking strong and I fancied us to go on and win it.

But whenever England reach the latter stages of a major tournament something always happens to deny us and this was no different.

We got off to a great start thanks to an excellent goal from Michael Owen but then Rooney got injured and the wheels fell off.

Wayne was our talisman and we lost our biggest attacking threat when he disappeared down the tunnel.

Nevertheless, the lads at the back kept us in the hunt with a magnificent rearguard action.

I know people have said we didn't play well as a team but that was partly to do with the circumstances.

When you score as early as we did, you do become entrenched in your own half because your first instinct is to protect what you've got.

In saying that, I felt we actually defended too deeply at times which invited even more pressure.

When Portugal grabbed that late equaliser, though, I still felt England would bounce straight back and we would have had a place in the semi-finals had Mr Meier not disallowed a perfectly good goal from 'big Sol' in injury time.

But we can't start dwelling on 'if onlys' and 'maybes.'

The reality is our Euro 2004 dreams are over and Sven must now raise his players for the forthcoming World Cup qualifying campaign.

In two years' time, the squad will be older and wiser. Could 2006 finally be our year?

I really hope so because 40 years is a heck of a lot of hurt.