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His new manager Phil Wilson said, "Mark had become tired of the situation at Carlisle. They have a lot of problems up there and Mark was glad to join us. He's a left-sided centre-back and exactly what we need."
It is eight years since Winstanley was brought to Turf Moor by Jimmy Mullen to play alongside Steve Davis at the back as a replacement for captain John Pender. He started well and even scored twice in a 3-2 win at Millwall but lost his place when Adrian Heath took over as manager.
With Waddle in charge he won himself a regular place in the side again but at left-back in a back four, a position he never really looked comfortable in and he became a target for some of the fans at Turf Moor.
In the following season he was out of the side for the first two games of the season and played his first (and last) game for Stan Ternent in the 1-0 home defeat against York. He was one of the ‘Gang of Four' who Stan said would never play for the club again, and he was never to appear in the first team again.
There were aborted loan moves to Scunthorpe and Preston before he signed for Shrewsbury for the following season. A year later it was Carlisle and now after two years in Michael Knighton's mad house (why oh why did they not let him have Manchester United?) he moves on again to Southport close to his home town of St. Helens.