Chelsea skipper John Terry has done his homework on new teammate Yuri Zhirkov.

The Daily Mail says Zhirkov, the £18million signing from CSKA Moscow, trained with his new team-mates for the first time yesterday but Terry had already got the inside track on the 25-year-old from German Tkachenko, a confidant of Stamford Bridge owner Roman Abramovich and powerful player agency president.

Terry learned of a player considered the biggest talent in Russia yet who prefers to shun the limelight as a private family man.

They are not the words of an agent trying to sell his player - Zhirkov, in fact, manages to get by without a representative taking a slice of his wages, now £80,000 a week from a three-year contract at Stamford Bridge.

Terry also dropped an email to Alexey Smertin - a former team-mate he affectionately calls the 'Crazy Russian' - and the recently retired 34-year-old midfielder believes Zhirkov will have no problem adapting to London.

Smertin said: "He must play with the same confidence and impudence that he shows for Russia and CSKA. But off the field he is a simple, humble guy and the British will appreciate that."