Brighton v Sheffield Wednesday: Lees calls on Owls fans to roar Wednesday to Wembley

The Owls defeated Brighton 2-0 in the first leg of the Championship play-off semi-final first leg on Friday night.

Wednesday will be backed by around 2,000 fans at the Amex Stadium on Monday night for the return leg as they look to take their fight to retake their place in the Premier League, all the way to the play-off final.

Lees believes that support will be vital, pointing to the highly-charged atmosphere at Hillsborough as proof of how inspired the players can be by such backing.

“That atmosphere was absolutely unreal,” said the former Leeds United defender. “It is the best atmosphere I have played in by a country mile.

“There was one point when the whole of one stand was bouncing, I could see on the pitch that the floodlights were actually moving. I thought, ‘The stand is going to come down in a minute.’

“That shows how much noise and passion was in the stadium, it was just unreal.

“I have played at big clubs before and the pressure can sometimes not be a positive thing.

“But since minute one here, there has never been any negativity and the fans have been quite realistic.

“Nights like Friday show it’s a proper club, a proper atmosphere, and it was just fantastic to play in.”

As for tonight’s second leg and the pursuit of promotion, Lees added: “I don’t think we are red hot favourites.

“No one has mentioned us all the way through. I can’t think of one pundit who has said we will go up.

“That won’t change because 2-0 isn’t massive. If it had been 3-0 or 4-0, maybe that would have changed. But this is still a dangerous scoreline.”