Howard ahead as Barthez blunders

Fabien Barthez's future at Manchester United looked bleaker than ever today after an embarrassing display in his side's 3-1 friendly defeat at Stoke.

The Frenchman made a series of blunders before suffering the humiliation of being substituted late in the second half.

He did not wait around to watch to rest of the game and headed straight for the tunnel.

It means new signing Tim Howard will almost certainly be in goal when United begin the defence of their Premiership title against Bolton on Saturday.

Barthez's first error was a weak pass to Mark Lynch which put the young full-back in trouble. And though he atoned with a superb stop from Carl Asaba's header, worse was to come.

With the score at 1-1, Mark Goodfellow caught Barthez off his line with a 30-yard lob. The keeper furiously back-tracked trying to keep it out, but the ball rebounded off the bar, hit Barthez on the head and rebounded into the net.

If that was not bad enough, Barthez was beaten again before Sir Alex Ferguson eventually called time and brought on Ricardo, although the substitute failed to keep out Chris Iwelumo's rasping near-post effort as Stoke secured an unlikely win.

Diego Forlan had earlier equalised for United with a superb 25-yard strike.

After being ditched by Ferguson in the wake of United's Champions League exit to Real Madrid last April, Barthez now appears to have fallen behind highly-rated American Howard in the pecking order. The summer signing starred in Sunday's penalty shootout victory over Arsenal in the Community Shield.