Ed Balls: Norwich City chairman warns of 'financial challenges' if no promotion

Sporting director Stuart Webber (left) and Ed Balls have admitted to mistakes at board level over the past year

Norwich City chairman Ed Balls says the club will face "big financial challenges" if they do not get promoted from the Championship this season.

They went down from the Premier League in 2015-16 and are in their final season of receiving parachute payments.

At the club's AGM the former shadow chancellor said a failure to go up would leave them with a £30m shortfall.

"We've reduced our salary bill a lot. We're trying to be lean, efficient and as good as we can," he said.

"The consequence of relegation from the Premier League and the ending of the parachute payments means that we face big financial challenges if we don't get promoted this season."

Parachute payments were brought in to protect clubs that are relegated into the second tier, having spent heavily on transfer fees and wages in the top flight.

Norwich are 15th in the Championship table, eight points away from the final play-off place.

"We're a self-financing club, without a big overseas owner injecting loads and loads of money," Balls told BBC Radio Norfolk.

"But we've done it before - we've got some really quality players coming through, we have an academy which can throw up great talent and we've been cutting our cloth over the last year."