Well, it was an astonishing night for England and one that neither Kevin Keegan nor his players will be able to forget for a very long time to come. Against a side who had struggled to find their form in their previous games over the past week the English had their chance to progress but simply weren't good enough to take it.

They can't say they didn't have luck on their side because they were nothing short of blessed to be ahead at half-time. They can't claim to have been treated harshly by the referee because he did well and was extremely even-handed. And at the end of the night they can't really believe they deserved anything more than defeat and an early trip home.

With the passing of time the game will probably be remembered as having been lost thanks to two individual errors, the first by Nigel Martyn and the second by Phil Neville - and, in fairness, both were terrible mistakes to make.

At 2-1 the stand-in goalkeeper came when he really should have left a harmless-looking cross to the two central defenders who were perfectly positioned to deal with it.

Then, with only a couple of minutes remaining, the full back shouldn't even have contemplated attempting a challenge on Viorel Moldovan when he had so little chance of making contact with the ball. That he would concede a penalty was inevitable and with it coming so late there was never going to be a way back into the game for his team.

Still, there are plenty of questions once again for Keegan to answer regarding his handling of the game. Quite how it took him 45 minutes to figure out that he had to do something about Adrian Mutu, who was thriving in the space just behind the front two, is completely beyond me.

And why he then went on, at 2-2, to make substitutions that were clearly aimed at winning the game rather than simply digging in to avoid defeat is just baffling.

It's impossible to see the England coach going after such a short period of time - he has already said he won't off his own bat and I just can't imagine them pushing him at this point - but after his performances here I think there will be a desire amongst his bosses to press some expert help upon him ahead of the World Cup campaign.

His inability to take account of the opposition is an enormous handicap and it doesn't make any difference how good you are at motivating players if you don't have the tactical nous to hold your own in a battle of wits against another coach. Once again last night we saw just how far behind the pack Keegan lags on that score.

The upshot was that, once again, we had an England team that didn't have it in them to kill off a game. There were a number of strong individual performances from England, most notably from Alan Shearer, who held the ball up magnificently and caused the Romanians quite a few problems. Behind him, though, things just fell apart as the game went on and when the final whistle went there was no doubting that the better team had won.

At this level of the game you have to be able to counter your opposition's strengths and England, the switching of Paul Ince to man-marking duties on Mutu aside, never even started to do that. Had Keegan done what he had done in the Germany game when he brought on another midfielder for Michael Owen and then allowed Paul Scholes to provide support for Shearer the Romanians might have had something to worry them over the closing stages, but as it was their defenders had only to gather possession and get the next attack rolling.

In a match like this both sides are going to get on top for periods but the knack is to kill the game off when you're the team under pressure. At no point did the English succeed in doing that.

The two best teams in the group have qualified for the quarter-finals and the two also rans will be going home. England's obsession with their traditional rivals probably helped to put them out of the competition because they became fixated on getting the win over Germany and then didn't get themselves back in the right frame of mind for what was just as big a match.

The humiliation of the Germans by the Portuguese second team put England's only victory in perspective. England's weaknesses will probably be brought even more sharply into focus at the weekend when the Romanians take on Italy.

Even after playing fairly well last night and keeping their heads when the pressure was on, it's impossible to see the Romanians getting through. And as for fighting back from 2-1 down against the Italians? Well, call me crazy but I really don't think so.

(In an interview with Emmet Malone)