A FORMER Blues player has admitted racking up £14,600 in unpaid bills by posing as a Chelsea winger.

Medi Abalimba, 25, is in custody in Manchester awaiting sentencing next month after admitting five counts of fraud in the City and London by posing as Chelsea’s Gael Kakuta.

Abalimba, who lives in Bloomsbury, London, signed for Derby County in 2009 after a stint on Southend United’s youth team, where he impressed Manchester United scouts as an Under- 16 midfielder, earning a trial in 2007.

In one week alone, he ran up a £9,600 bill at three London luxury hotels and, in Manchester, ran up a £5,000 tab at a club and tried to buy £20,000 of clothes at the Trafford Centre.

The scam began in March, less than a year after Abalimba was handed a suspended jail sentence after admitting using a false bank card to order £26,000 of champagne, when he called the Mandarin Oriental in Hyde Park pretending to be Kakuta’s agent and dining there the next evening.

Abalimba was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and, although tipped for Premier League stardom early in his career, was signed by Farnborough Town in August 2012 on a wage of just £300aweek – supplementing his income with part-time work.