No surprise that missing Birmingham City man is now a free agent: View

Under new ownership, the reported transfer fees Birmingham City are offering in League One in 2024 have raised some eyebrows, but no deal is ever likely to cause as much confusion as the one they made five years previous.

Scouts at top English clubs, and even now further down the pyramid, have eyes and ears everywhere, so teams can often spring a surprise on fans and unearth a gem that nobody had heard of beforehand.

That, however, was not the case when the Blues dipped into the fourth tier of Spanish football to rescue Chinese midfielder Bernard Sun from a folding reserve team.

The move begged many questions at the time, something that has only intensified with the benefit of hindsight.

Blues plucked Bernard Sun from nowhere

Before making the switch to St. Andrew’s, Sun had been turning out for Spanish side Estudiantes de Murcia, a club that had only existed in its final guise since 2016, before folding in 2019, which is when Birmingham set the free transfer in motion.

Estudiantes were themselves a reserve side for fellow Murcia side FC Jumilla, a team in the third tier that also folded in 2019. Jumilla were under Chinese ownership and struck up a partnership with fellow Midlands side Wolverhampton Wanderers while they were still active, which saw several Premier League players join the side on loan.

He had been in China’s U18 setup and was loaned out to Gimnastic de Tarragona in the January prior to his Blues switch, before which he had attracted attention from the Chinese Super League.

Sun was born in Bejing but moved to Koblenz in Germany when he was seven, which is where he started his football career, initially in the youth setup of German side Kaiserslautern, then switching to Eisbachtal, before he arrived in Spain.

While scouts are charged with uncovering talent in unlikely places, it is certainly not the CV of a then 20-year-old that would usually pique the interest of one of the bigger clubs in England.

It didn’t work out at St Andrew’s for Bernard Sun

There was considerable bafflement at the time of the deal, and it would prove to be justified.

Sun, the Blues’ first-ever Chinese player, signed a two-year deal when he arrived at the club and many fans were stuck trying to work out the motivation behind the move.

There was confusion, some pondered whether it was to boost the club’s reach in China, and others saw it as an investment for the youth side.

At the end of his contract with the Midlands side, which wasn’t extended, Sun had only played a minor part in the U23s due to injuries and never reached the Blues’ first team.

Bernard Sun’s post-Birmingham career leads to further questions

Of course, not everybody is going to move to a club near the summit of the English pyramid and make a success of it. Many show promise at a young age but later drop down a few leagues and still make a successful career in the game.

However, according to Transfermarkt, after leaving England, Sun spent half a year with German fifth-tier side Turk Gucu Friedberg and, still only 25 years old, has been out of the game since January 2022.

Dropping to such a level and then leaving the game completely is unusual for a player rated highly enough to play in one of the top academy systems in England, so naturally questions will remain about the level Sun was at when he arrived at the club, and what prompted Birmingham to make a move for him in the first place.