Major actions of the First World War in which the BEF took part

1914: Basically on the defensive having been attacked by the Germans, the then tiny BEF (80,000 strong) fought delaying actions until they joined up with the French to fight the First Battle of the Marne which ended all German hopes for a rapid victory on the weatern front over the French and the British.   The Battle of the Yser in October 1914 was another defeat for the Germans and the war settled in to become a war of attrition that the Germans fighting on two fronts could only lose.

(So for the allied powers - 1914 could have been seen as being not too shoddy a result considering the fact that the Germans had numerical superiority in every single engagement).

1915: You'll like this Christmas, as according to you 1914 was such a successful year for the Germans that in the whole of 1915 they were by and large forced onto the defensive and could only mount one single offensive action at Ypres that ended in failure. Reinforcement of the BEF rapidly increased its strength. Throughout 1915 the British and French Armies attacked the Germans sometimes successfully and other times not so successfully. By the way Christmas if you wish to trumpet the Battle of Loos in 1915 as a defeat and a disaster for the British, then by exactly the same yardstick you have to designate the German offensive in the west in 1914 as a defeat and disaster - particularly if you consider the end result of the war - i.e. Germans defeated, Allies victorious.

1916: The German High Command no longer believe that a breakthrough is now possible committed as they are to fighting in the East and in the West.

Battle of Verdun - A German offensive action that lasted nine months and ended in a victory for the French.

Battle of the Somme - A combined French and British offensive action designed to relieve the pressure on the French at Verdun that lasted five and a half months and viewed as a victory for the French and the British.

Although both the above battles were costly for all the combatant powers involved, the British and the French could replenish their losses the Germans could not. These two battles in 1916 presaged the German defeat in the First World War just as surely as the two battles in 1942 at Stalingrad and El-Alamein presaged German defeat in the Second World War.

1917: The Germans now totally on the defensive.
Battle of Arras - tactical Allied victory
Second Battle of the Aisne - a tactical defeat for the French but at the end of the costly Nivelle offensive campaign it was the Germans who were forced to withdraw.
Battle of Messines - tactical Allied victory, described by Hindenburg as being a heavy defeat for the Germans and by Von Kuhl as being one of the worst German tragedies of the War.
Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) - described as a tactical Allied victory, a strategic Allied victory, yet an operational Allied failure.

To the German General Staff at Passchendaele "Germany had been brought near to certain destruction by the Flanders battle of 1917"

According to Lloyd George - "Passchendaele was indeed one of the greatest disasters of the war .... No soldier of any intelligence now (1938) defends this senseless campaign..."

But dating back to 1916 and the Battle of the Somme there had been a marked change in the British Army deployed in France, the BEF had developed a workable system of all arms, offensive tactics against which the Germans ultimately had no answer.

1918: With Russia out of the war 50 German Divisions were freed for use on the Western Front, British "bite and hold" tactics forced the Germans to adopt a strategy of seeking a decisive battle. This manifested itself in their Spring Offensive of 1918, it had to be early as they hoped to defeat the British and force France to accept terms before the Americans could make their presence felt on the Western Front. The offensive lasted for four months and was considered a tactical German success but a strategic and operational failure in that they failed to deliver the knock out blow that their plan required. The extent of their advances is shown in the link below - Christmas take a look at how far they penetrated the BEF line compared to elsewhere, remembering of course that defeat of the British was essential to the success of their plan:

German Spring Offensive 1918

By July of 1918 the German Army was spent and the Allies went over onto the offensive.
The Second Battle of the Marne was a decisive allied victory fought over three weeks in late July and early August. This battle opened what became known as the 100 Days Offensive, a series of battles that led to a decisive Allied victory and the collapse of the German Empire.

Allied final offensives 1918

The tactics, and the equipment required to render all of this possible was brought to the table for the allies to use courtesy of British ingenuity and innovation all gathered from lessons learned from the initial contact at Mons in 1914 right up until the Somme in 1916. The BEF, the "contemptible little Army" of 80,000 men deployed in August 1914, by 1918 was a formidable force of some 4,000,000 men. So on the whole - Yes they were well led - I say the results they achieved, under the circumstances and conditions they fought through, speak for themselves, they were obviously better led than their opponents.