There will come a time when the script will change for England.

Sven-Goran Eriksson won't be there, David Beckham probably won't be there and even the likes of Wayne Rooney and Aaron Lennon might not be there.

But the script will change. It has to.

Too many times England have put in heroic performances in the face of adversity only to make an agonising exit from a major tournament.

The latest chapter came in a sweltering Gelsenkirchen on Saturday night as England rode the sending-off of their talisman Wayne Rooney to take Portugal the distance.

Yet shootout misses from Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher gave 'Big Phil' Scolari his third major tournament success over Eriksson, sent Portugal into the last four and consigned England to an early trip home.

Make no mistake about it, though, for all their heroics with 10 men against the Portuguese, England simply weren't good enough to win the biggest prize of all.

From the start of the tournament a nation waited for England to show their class. For Lampard to up his level to that he produces for Chelsea week-in, week-out. For Rooney to shake of the shackles of his infamous broken metatarsal. For Eriksson to show some passion in the dying embers of his reign as England manager.

But in the final reckoning they came up short.

Of course, the signs were there from early on in Germany no matter how much we tried to ignore them and repeat Eriksson's mantra that 'winning is everything'.

The performances in the group stages and second round were simply not those of a World Cup winner. Yet we could point to the likes of Mexico, Spain and Holland - all in better form than England but all flying home prematurely.

The fact was we were into the quarter-finals without playing well and that in itself was a reason to be positive. After all we simply MUST improve, and even if we didn't we were in something of a groove, grinding out positive results one after the other.

Yet while players and manager alike insisted this was 'our year' there was never the conviction on the field to back up the words trotted all too easily out in press conferences.

At times Eriksson seemed to be throwing bibs up in the air on the training field and basing his subsequent formation on how they landed.

The loss of Michael Owen so early in the tournament was a huge setback, exacerbated by Eriksson's frankly ludicrous decision to travel with only four strikers, one of whom he had not seen play live before naming him in his squad. How he must regret that.

By the time Plan C (or was it D?) had been executed, we were left with Rooney as a lone front man often surrounded by two central defenders with Lampard and Gerrard attempting to get up with the Manchester United man quickly in support.

Yet Lampard looked a shadow of the man we see in the Premiership on a weekly basis, with his performances a worrying flashback to the way the impish Paul Scholes was misused towards the tail-end of his international career.

Gerrard did, of course, produce an encore of his FA Cup final heroics with his wonder goal against Trinidad & Tobago but he failed to take hold of games in the same way he does for Liverpool.

Time and time again it was pointed out to Eriksson that (largely the fact that both love to do most of their work going forward) Lampard and Gerrard have rarely functioned together as an effective central midfield partnership for England.

Yet in the face of mounting evidence, the Swede tried to make it happen.

Michael Carrick and Owen Hargreaves were employed in the 'holding' role in midfield and both were impressive. Yet still Lampard and Gerrard couldn't sparkle and despite the former's string of missed chances Eriksson refused to grasp the nettle.

It was a case of picking your best 11 players but not necessarily your best team, throwing them onto the field and, at times, hoping for the best.

And in the end Eriksson - and England - were found out.

Of course, the irony is that the performance after Rooney's sending-off against a Portugal team who are hardly great shakes was probably their best of the tournament.

But they looked woefully short of ideas until the red card allowed them to adopt the 'backs against the wall' mentality teams down to 10 men are so good at.

Hargreaves, the best defensive midfielder in the squad and quite brilliant once again against Portugal, does not have the passing range of Carrick and all too often that meant Rio Ferdinand and John Terry had to resort to long, hopeful balls forward.

So why - if the fluid 4-5-1/4-3-3 formation was the way Eriksson wanted to play and if form is the primary factor when considering team selection - did we not see a five-man midfield of Beckham, Carrick, Hargreaves, Gerrard and Joe Cole?

The grit of Hargreaves allied to the cuter passing of Carrick would have given England much more options and would have allowed Gerrard more freer rein to get forward and impose himself - but Lampard is apparently undroppable.

So as Eriksson rides off into the sunset, most likely to Real Madrid, the Swede would do well to ponder on the criticism that he is all too fond of players with 'reputations'.

There are plenty of those in the Spanish capital, but it'll take more than past success to bring back the glory days for Los Galacticos. And if he thinks the English press and fans are thirsty for success, wait until the white handkerchiefs start waving.

As for England, Steve McClaren represents the future.

Given his association with the current regime it's hard to see too much changing - but McClaren must prove us wrong on that score.

He must decide his favoured formation and stick with it so his players can adjust, pick his best team accordingly and not shirk the big decisions.

It's simple advice, but it's advice Eriksson systematically failed to take.

McClaren needs to rewrite the script. For himself, his players and his country.