Scottish Premiership club take £13m ex-Champions League star with 73 international caps on trial

The 37-year-old, who has played in the Champions League and was once the subject of a £13million transfer, will begin a training stint with the Perth club on Wednesday.

Eremenko, who is the younger brother of ex-Kilmarnock favourite Alexei, has been playing with IF Gnistan in his homeland. His previous clubs include Udinese, Dynamo Kyiv, Rubin Kazan and CSKA Moscow.

St Johnstone manager Simo Valakari plans to assess the playmaker before deciding whether to offer a short-term deal.

"It will work both ways," Valakari said. "We can see him and he can have a look at us. That’s the best way to do it before we sit down and talk about things further. Roman has all the qualities that his big brother had - good vision, good technical ability and is someone who can see passes.

“He’s been in the Champions League with some very big clubs. Roman is not a flashy player, he does the simple things very, very well. He has a real football brain; it’s like a computer inside his head. It will be very interesting to see him training with us, see how his level is compared to our levels. I’m excited about it but we can’t get too far ahead of ourselves because at the moment it’s just training.”

Eremenko, capped 73 times by his country, became the most expensive Finnish football in history when transferring between Dynamo Kyiv and Rubin Kazan in 2011 but hit the headlines for the wrong reaasons five years later when he was banned for two years after testing positive for cocaine while at CSKA.

Valakari added: "There will be question marks about his age and his past. Roman feels because of his mistakes - which were a long way in the past - he hasn’t fulfilled the whole potential in his career.

“He was almost in tears when I phoned him to ask if he wanted to come here because he didn’t think he’d get another chance abroad. I just told him to come over, see how things work out and then we’ll talk. After a few days we will know better.”