There are plenty of examples. The fight against Zabuza where Naruto's plan and its perfect execution were solely responsible for freeing kakashi from the water prison. The fight againt the three mist ninja's in which Naruto used kage bunshin and henge to make copies of his teammates and fight, allowing his real team mates to hide was another example in which naruto's plan was the reason for victory. In the fight against Gaara, Naruto used gaara's preconception of him and an apparently stupid move (the 1000 years of pain) to conceal the exploding tag which damaged gaara to the point that naruto was able to make use of his kage bunshins to actually land blows on gaara. There are others I'm sure, but they're not coming to mind. Naruto's shown plenty of cleverness.

The problem is that people are unable to forgive his moments of bullshit because he's so noisy and is portrayed as an idiot. But when he's serious, he's a contender against anyone.