Birmingham City's record transfer signing is Jay Stansfield, who arrived from Fulham for £15m, rising to £20m with incentives, on 30 August 2024 — an EFL League One record fee at signing, and the deal that finally broke a record David Dunn had held for 21 years. Their record sale remains Jude Bellingham's £25m move to Borussia Dortmund in July 2020, still the biggest fee the club has ever received for a player.
A Record That Survived 21 Years
Birmingham's transfer record moved twice before Stansfield ever arrived. Clinton Morrison's £4.25m move from Crystal Palace in July 2002 set the record as Birmingham won promotion to the Premier League, before David Dunn's £7.6m arrival from Blackburn Rovers in 2003 pushed it further still. Remarkably, Dunn's fee then survived for two decades, untouched even by Emile Heskey's high-profile 2004 arrival from Liverpool — reported by some as a record-breaker, but in fact a deal structured at £3.5m rising to a maximum of £6.25m, which relegation meant Birmingham never paid out in full. Nikola Žigić (£6m) and Ivan Šunjić (£6.9m) both arrived for fees below Dunn's too. It took Jay Stansfield's £15m move from Fulham in August 2024 to finally end Dunn's two-decade reign, as Birmingham won the third tier and returned to the Championship with Stansfield contributing 19 league goals.
The Bellingham Sell-On That Keeps Paying Out
Birmingham's record sale is more famous. Jude Bellingham's £25m move to Borussia Dortmund in July 2020 made him the most expensive 17-year-old in football history at the time, and the deal's 5% sell-on clause meant Birmingham banked a second payday when Bellingham moved to Real Madrid in 2023 — a rare case of a selling club profiting twice from the same player. It surpassed the club's previous record sale, Che Adams's £15m move to Southampton in 2019.
Birmingham paid £7.6m for David Dunn in 2003 and didn't spend more on a single signing again until 2024. In between, they sold a 17-year-old to Dortmund for £25m and are still collecting on the sell-on clause five years later.
See how Dunn's old fee compares with West Bromwich Albion's own record signing, Birmingham's fiercest rivals in the Second City derby.
