How to win a league title: The lessons Sheffield Wednesday can learn from when Leeds United did it Howard Wilkinson's way

Every team fighting to be a champion is blessed with talent. Who comes out on top can often be as much about what is between the ears as in the boots.

Newsome says the key for the Leeds team he played for was... golf?

"(Manager) Howard Wilkinson was instrumental because he never put any pressure on us," says Newsome, now a BBC radio pundit who follows Leeds and the Owls.

"He likened it to playing golf – I think he'd just got into golf at the time. He said when Arnold Palmer or Gary Player were standing on the 18th tee in the last round of a major they didn't start dissecting their swings, so we had to trust what had got us here and trust it would get us through."

If the Owls are not yet on the 18th, they are certainly well into the back nine and starting to show a few signs of yips having gone into Easter on the back of five matches without a win.

Pressure comes with the territory. Forget resources or comfortably the biggest crowds in League One, just the name Sheffield Wednesday brings an expectation they should not be in English football's third tier.

Although they have had promotions since – Newsome was part of one in 1990-91 – Wednesday have not won a league title since 1959, when they were Division Two champions for the third time that decade.

Newsome says his boyhood club need that Arnold Palmer mentality now more than ever – and not just the players.

"That's the message that has to go out to the supporters as well," he stresses.

"I've been at Hillsborough recently and seen how well they can play. We all know top sport is all about confidence and belief.

"I wasn't there against Lincoln but I saw the highlights and as soon as they conceded you can see the atmosphere change in the ground, people start to get a bit nervy and that transfers to the players on the pitch, they start taking an extra touch.

"It's about that belief and confidence/arrogance. You've got to say to yourself, 'We've done the hard work, we've got to see it over the line by doing the same things.'

"They've got to continue in the way they did when they went 23 (league) games unbeaten."

When Newsome swapped Hillsborough for Elland Road in the summer of 1991 he was still wet behind the ears but joining a dressing room that was anything but. It was a perfect combination.

"The innocence of youth helped me because all I was concentrating on was trying to play well enough to be in the team the next week," he recalls.

"I got into the team at the back end of the season and you're sat in a dressing room with (David) Batty, (Gary) Speed, (Gary) MacAllister, (Gordon) Strachan, (Chris) Fairclough, (Lee) Chapman, (Rod) Wallace, (John) Lukic, (Tony) Dorigo... for a 21-year-old lad from Sheffield, I was pinching myself, really – what am I doing here?

"I was fortunate because I used to share a room with Steve Hodge, coming to the back end of his career. He'd played in the (1986) World Cup quarter-finals and won things.

"He used to pull me to one side and say to me, 'Make sure you enjoy this. Don't let it pass you by, enjoy every single day of this because it might never happen again.'

"And he was right."

Did he follow that advice?

"We did," says Newsome. "We were fortunate we played football in the times before cameras on people's phones and social media, getting pulled to pieces for everything you did whether you were right or wrong.

"We could go out for a beer, go out and celebrate, and we shared it with the fans. That was the amazing bit."

If Hodge was a big influence, Strachan was a massive one on a club which only returned to the top division the previous season after eight years in Division Two.

"Gordon Strachan was the best footballer I ever played with and I played with some crackerjacks – Chrissy Waddle, Paolo Di Canio, Eric Cantona," says Newsome. "But Gordon was unbelievable. He ran the game from the right wing.

"He was effectively Howard's assistant manager. He used to come in and have his say before the gaffer did sometimes. Quite rightly at times he'd absolutely tear a strip off you. I was so, so fortunate to learn my trade under such outstanding individuals."

That dressing room experience proved invaluable in the spring of 1992 as Leeds stumbled in a title race with Manchester United, who had not won England's top prize since 1967.

Having lost 4-1 to Queens Park Rangers in mid-March, Leeds followed a 0-0 draw with West Ham United with a 4-0 defeat to Manchester City in early April which had some writing them off. But Leeds regained their poise and it was the other United who lost theirs, at Easter.

"We knew there were five games to go and a lot could happen, especially in the old Division One," says Newsome.

"There was no pressure on us, not at all. I don't think it was on anybody's mind, it was a bit of a free hit. We wanted to win the championship, of course, but if we finished second, we hadn't half had a good season.

"The pressure was on the team over the hill. They got beaten by Forest and West Ham (in consecutive Easter games) and all of a sudden you were thinking, 'Wow! Has the pressure got to them? Is it too great for them to handle?'

"I think that was shown by Alex Ferguson's comments afterwards when he said, 'Leeds United haven't won the title, we've lost it.'"

Newsome only made seven league starts in his debut season but supporters old enough will forever remember him for what commentator Alan Parry called "the most important goal of the season so far for Leeds United" as he stooped to head in Gary McAllister's free-kick at Bramall Lane on April 26, 1992.

Behind to Alan Cork's goal, Newsome put Leeds 2-1 up. Half-an-hour later they had won 3-2 and a couple more hours later they were English champions, the last of the pre-Premier League era, after their Lancashire rivals lost at Liverpool.

"It's the biggest day of my footballing career and it came so early," says Newsome. "Sometimes you get a bit spoilt early on.

"That game was massive for us and for me being a Sheffield lad, a Sheffield Wednesday fan going back to Sheffield and playing against the team that probably hated me and were our bitter rivals. Lots of my friends were at Sheffield United so it was a massive, massive day for me and the club.

"There must have been 150,000 at that game because every Leeds United fan I ever see pats me on the back and says, 'I was there in '92, Jon!'

"Was it a bit of an unfair advantage us kicking off earlier? I think it was, it put heaps of pressure on Man United going to Anfield. But if we'd have got beaten, they'd have bounced into Anfield with a spring in their step."

For Wednesday, 31 years on, the expectations and pressures are different.

For them, Plymouth Argyle, Ipswich Town and Barnsley are all in the hunt going into the run-in.

"You can't not take notice of the other teams," says their former defender. "You can't allow it to affect your performances but you'd be an absolute fool not to take notice of what's happening. You wouldn't be human.

"When all of a sudden they falter, you suddenly clench your teeth and your fists a bit harder and you want to run through that brick wall."

But like Leeds in 1992, Newsome says the Owls have the safety valve that second would not be a disaster.

"That football club has to get promoted this season," he argues. "If you go up as champions, even better. That really is the proverbial icing on the top of the cake but the biggest thing for that football club – financially, for the supporters and everything around it – is they have to get promotion this season.

"The last thing they want to do is drop into the play-offs because we know what that's all about.

"They've got to trust their swing, trust what's got them there and not over-think it and make the whole experience 10 times more difficult."

But in players like Barry Bannan, Liam Palmer, Aiden Flint, David Stockdale, Will Vaulks, George Byers, Marvin Johnson, Lee Gregory and Michael Smith, Newsome sees the kind of steadying influences he once benefited from.

"They've got to have that belief and use their experience," he says. "Just play each game as it comes.

"I'd like to think their experienced lads have got the calming influence that will get them over the line."