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Coming into this weekend ten years ago, Leicester City sat top of the Premier League table with 47 points after 23 rounds of fixtures. Their closest challengers were Manchester City and Arsenal - both three points behind - and Tottenham Hotspur, five points in arrears.

According to the bookmakers, Claudio Ranieri’s side were still not favourites to win the title. To a large extent, that was understandable. After all, two powerful, deep squads were breathing down their necks and Mauricio Pochettino’s Spurs were playing some very decent stuff.

And Leicester had finished 14th the season before. But what the bookmakers and a lot of fans and pundits did not factor in was the respective workloads.

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Leicester only had their remaining 15 Premier League games to deal with. Fifteen matches in 15 weeks. It turned out that, during that time, Arsenal and Spurs would play 21 times while Manchester City would play 25 times.

Arsenal finished second, ten points behind Leicester. Spurs were a point further away in third, with City 15 points behind the remarkable champions. Of those last 15 matches, Ranieri’s men won ten, drew four and lost only one - a slightly controversial narrow defeat at the Emirates that saw Leicester reduced to ten men after taking the lead.

In those last 15 matches, they scored 26 goals and conceded only eight. For those who put great importance on the relative workloads in the second half of the season, this was considerable weight to their argument that fixture demands can play a pivotal part in the final standings.

And a decade on, Manchester United will add a bit more weight. A decade ago, the bookmakers got it wrong when Leicester City - when leading after 23 games - were still not favourites to win the title and they have got it wrong now by having United at odds against finishing in the top four (albeit narrowly at 5/4). They should be way shorter than that.

Naturally, commentators and a lot of supporters are calling for calm after the dramatic and successful start to Michael Carrick’s tenure. But a dispassionate look, not only at the fantastic victories over Manchester City at Old Trafford and Arsenal at the Emirates but at the physical demands of the remainder of the season, tells you why Carrick and United fans should be bullish.

Around the training complexes of Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea and others, the phrase you will probably hear most is ‘red zone’. Players in the red zone. Players having to have minutes managed. Presumably, we are not going to hear that from Carrick.

This season, United have played 25 games across all competitions. That compares to 36 for Chelsea and Manchester City (who both played in the Club World Cup in the summer), 35 for Liverpool (if you include the Community Shield) and 33 for Aston Villa.

United now have 15 games left in 15 weeks. Liverpool and Aston Villa have a minimum of 18 games left, while City and Chelsea have a minimum of 19 games. And most, if not all, those teams will face more.

Considering his recent form, the injury to Patrick Dorgu is bad news for United and for Carrick, but the manager has a largely fit squad with plenty of options. It was one heck of a bench Carrick named at the Emirates. Eight of United’s remaining fixtures are at home and Carrick has a core of English players - Luke Shaw, Kobbie Mainoo, Harry Maguire and possibly even Mason Mount - who know they have 15 club games to prove they are worthy of a place in Thomas Tuchel’s World Cup squad.

Carrick is a very impressive character, a very likeable individual, a very well-respected figure in the game, with a very good reputation at the club. The party line would probably be that it is way too early to judge, that there should be no knee-jerk reaction to two stellar results.

But everything is set up for Carrick to take United to fourth place or even higher. The job is surely his to lose.

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