I thought the talk is about tactics & strategies, how come there are talks about skills / technics? Very different you know, a player with limited technics / skills like me but with better tactical awareness would do well compare to a player with a bundle of skills but no tactical knowledge who would always run into a blind alley. A very good example would be Jamie Carragher who is a limited player by EPL standards, almost no skills of note, but with much much superior awareness and tactical nous, he'd come up on top almost every time because of his reading of the game.
Another would be C*** Ronaldo (sorry, couldn't resist the dig) in his early days in the EPL, very skillful, but wiht almost no tactical or strategy and awareness, resulting in him doing countless of stepovers and not being able to produce the end result of a cross or a pass or a goal.
A player with both would be the likes of Kaka & Xabi Alonso, they can read the game well and have the skills to beat the player or to put the pass to where it hurts the team most. That is a rarity, that is why they are rated so high by the respective teams and supporters. Just my two cents. Will talk a bit more about tactics later, as I am interested in tactics and how to make the team work.

They do, I am merely pointing out examples of a few, plus I think they need to do it consistantly in EPL and in Europe to be able to justify that tag.

15 players, sounded like rugby to me, someone call monstar...