Birmingham City
Lee signed a permanent one-year contract with Birmingham City in May 2013, with the option of a further year, and no transfer fee was involved.
He took part in pre-season friendlies with the first team, scoring against Alfreton Town, and made his competitive debut as a late substitute in the League Cup on 6 August, just seconds before Plymouth Argyle's equaliser took the match into extra time. With Tom Adeyemi unavailable and Callum Reilly unfit to start, both because of illness, Lee made his first appearance in the Championship at Leeds United on 20 October and played the full 90 minutes as Birmingham lost 4–0. He and Peter Løvenkrands entered the League Cup fourth-round match against Stoke City as 79th-minute substitutes with Birmingham 3–1 down. Lee's 85th-minute free kick led to Løvenkrands pulling a goal back, and after the same player's equaliser took the match into extra time, Lee himself scored his first competitive goal for Birmingham, from outside the penalty area in the 118th minute to make the score 4–4, and converted his penalty in the shootout, which Birmingham lost. He scored his first league goal for Birmingham, with a volleyed finish after Nikola Žigić headed the ball down, on 15 February 2014 in a 2–1 defeat at home to Huddersfield Town, and finished the season with 20 appearances, of which 16 were in Championship matches.
Having failed to set foot on the field for the first team in 2014–15, Lee joined League Two club Plymouth Argyle in January 2015 on a month's loan. He went straight into the starting eleven, and came close to scoring an equaliser from a free kick as Plymouth lost 1–0 at home to Luton Town. He played seven matches during the month, scored once, a stoppage-time header with Argyle already 3–1 down at Hartlepool United, and was sent off in the last of the seven for a foul on Exeter City's Tom Nichols. Despite the consequent three-match suspension, Lee's loan was extended to the end of the season. He made a further eight appearances for Argyle, but was forced to miss the end of the regular season, when Argyle qualified for the play-offs, because of a groin injury.
Birmingham confirmed he would be released when his contract expired at the end of the season.
