Yeah, for sure we’ve lacked tactical/mental awareness. It’s been a dreadful combination of not knowing football, broadly, on one hand and having inherited the English insistence on size and physicality on the other.
Even with a sport we know, hockey, there has been a propensity to choose size and strength over skill. Gretzky was told he wouldn’t amount to much and the average fan booed him for years. He was fundamentally repulsive - too much skill and incredible awareness in a spindly body.