TOMMY Lowery made a surprise return to the Crewe Alex fold in tonight's Papa John's Trophy victory at Shrewsbury.

The midfielder - who has refused to commit to fresh contract terms - played his first senior game of the campaign at the Montgomery Waters Meadow with Dave Artell hoping headway can be made in the contract wrangle which has seen the 23-year-old sit out the pre-season schedule and the club's first seven games.

Lowery's reappearance comes after clear-the-air talks with the Alex boss who says he will talk again with the player's agent.

A tight encounter against Salop was settled in dramatic fashion with a stoppage-time effort (90+2) by on-loan Manchester City youngster Ben Knight.

On-loan Celtic midfielder Scott Robertson started in a side showing eight changes from the one losing at Charlton at the weekend.

Crewe had the better of the openings with Regan Griffiths directing an early chance past the post. Shrews keeper Harry Burgoyne turned around an Oli Finney effort after the break.

While Dave Richards was also impressive thwarting Nathanael Ogbeta late on.

But after Chris Porter headed down teenager Knight finished clinically to end Crewe's goal drought, which had stretched over more than nine-and-a-half hours of football, to head off the need for an extra-point penalty shoot-out.

With Robertson and frontman Scott Kashket joining yesterday, Sky Sports reported that Artell was still pursuing options ahead of the 11pm transfer deadline tonight (Tuesday) with an attempt to tempt Brentford's Ecuadorian winger Joel Valencia into a loan deal.

Of the Lowery situation, Artell stressed: "I don't want Tom not to play football, but that doesn't mean I will throw our business model under the bus.

"But I will do everything to help Tom, although he's got to help himself and he knows that and his agent has got to help him.

"If his agent wants to make money by taking him to X club on £400 to £500 more because he hasn't played all season then that's his choice.

"We're not there yet and we had a really good chat. We've got 10 days now without a game where we can thrash something out and he gets back to playing football."