Hello and welcome to the first edition of 'Forgotten Wizards of the Premier League™'. For those of you who are alien to the concept I will elucidate. In order to qualify as a forgotten wizard of the Premier League™ you must A) Have played for a middle to lower table side, B) Scored between 15 and 50 Premier League goals and C) be someone I arbitrarily pulled out of my arse.
Brought to English shores by Graeme Souness, Pedersen's Scandinavian boy band looks, frosted tips the softly spoken ways were among some of the reasons he became a fan favourite at Ewood Park. Arriving from Norwegian side Tromsø to replace Damien Duff who had left for Chelsea, Pedersen developed a reputation for screaming volleys from his left peg as well as the odd free kick.
Pedersen was the epitome of a player who you always thought would end up signing for one of the 'Big Four'. But Pedersen clearly found a home at the Lancashire club and how Blackburn would love to have a vintage Pedersen among their ranks as they currently battle it out in England's third tier.
The flying Norwegian turned out for Rovers from 2004 to 2013, assisting 39 goals and scoring 35, and many of those strikes were absolute worldies:
He also holds the accolade for the World's worst dive against Arsenal:
The fecker even got one past the boys in green in a 2010 friendly.
He also scored a mirror image of Marco Van Basten's immaculate volley against the USSR against Hungary in 2008.
Pedersen left Blackburn for Karabükspor in 2013 and returned to boyhood club Tromsø in 2016 where he currently plies his trade.
But for me at least, I remember Morten Gamst Pedersen with fondness. He was a proto-Ronaldo, with an eye for a volley on par with RVP. He was regular on Match Of The Day 'Goal of the Month' competitions and Blackburn man should be better known among football fans as someone capable of lighting up a football pitch.
He also looks like good craic on Instagram:
