Tranmere Rovers have agreed the transfer of Andy Mangan back to Shrewsbury Town - from where he joined the Superwhites in the summer - for an undisclosed fee.

Mangan denied rumours of a fall out with manager Gary Brabin and said the Shrews' offer of League One football was "too good to miss."

The striker quickly established himself as a fans’ favourite and hit an early seam of form which saw him score seven goals in 22 appearances for the club.

But since coming back from injury, he has not appeared regularly in the starting line-up and has not scored since October 6.

Mangan said: "At 29 years old, I want to be playing 90 minutes of football on a regular basis and the gaffer could not guarantee that I would get that at Tranmere.

"Shrewsbury made an approach for me and offered an 18-month contract and the chance to be involved in League One, which was an opportunity which was too good to miss.

" I had a long chat with the gaffer about it and he agreed that he would not stand in the way of me going.

"Any talk of there being a fall out is absolute nonsense – we get on very well and I have every confidence that he will lead the team to a play-off place.

"I would like to thank the Tranmere fans for giving me such a warm welcome to the club and I will be rooting for them for promotion."

Manager Brabin said: "We will be sorry to see Andy go but it was obviously a very tempting offer for him and I could not commit to what Shrewsbury were offering.

"We are letting him go because I think it is only fair to do the right thing by the player, rather than keeping him in a role where he is getting frustrated, which doesn’t help the club. "

I have been trying to strengthen our squad and continue to look for players who will compliment those players we have and, in particular, provide support for James Norwood up front."

A club spokesman said: "It is unfortunate that inaccurate reports of this being a done deal were leaked to the press many days before a transfer had actually been agreed."