A watershed for Landon Donovan.

We assumed he would score in the Premier League for Everton, but he didn’t in his first four matches with the club (including a defeat Saturday in the FA Cup) … and he never scored in a real match for Leverkusen or Bayern Munich, which left him 0-for-European clubs in his career.

So it had to be good for him to get one in the 2-0 victory over Sunderland on Wednesday night.

He knocked home, with his left foot, a 15-yard shot off a header from Tim Cahill, the Australian who scored the first goal for Everton.

It must also have been rewarding for Landon to have coach David Moyes say, after the match (see the video in the BBC link, above) that he essentially knew Donovan would score based on his record with the U.S. national team.

Everton is rolling now, not having lost in its last eight Premiership matches, three of which Donovan started. So maybe he’s a bit of a good luck charm, as well — when it’s not an FA match.

And losing in the FA Cup … maybe it was a bit of a blessing, in that it reduces the schedule for a side that has been trashed by injuries. Everton already has a pair of Europa League matches with Sporting Lisbon coming up next month. (Everton is playing in Europe’s secondary club tournament, thanks to a fifth-place finish, a year ago.)

Everton seems able to hang with the major clubs in England when it has most of its players available, and perhaps it can continue that surge right up into the top half dozen in the standings. Though making up nine points on Manchester City and Liverpool (and eight on Aston Villa) in 16 matches is a significant challenge.

Everton also has an imposing Premier League schedule coming up in February: at arch-rival Liverpool, home against Chelsea, home against Manchester United and at Tottenham Hotspur — all clubs ahead of it in the standings.

At the least, Everton is now safely out of the relegation zone, and Landon Donovan had a role in that. He is now part of a starting midfield quartet that includes Steven Pienaar,  Marouane Fellaini and Phil Neville, one that has shown stretches of dominating matches and real threats on the attacking end. And Everton has a couple of competent backups at the position, as well, in Mikel Arteta and Diniyar Bilyaletdinov.

Having scored a goal (even against Sunderland, winless in nine Premier League matches) will fuel more talk about Donovan perhaps extending his 10-week loan in England. Talk that will go up in volume if Major League Soccer and its players fail to sign a new agreement.

And we also cannot underestimate the importance of Donovan having a coach who believes in him and is personally invested in seeing him succeed. That would be Moyes. Which differs from his situations in the past, where his German coaches tended not to have any faith in his ability or (in the case of Juergen Klinsmann last year) had their decisions influenced by policymakers (Franz Beckenbauer) who didn’t believe in him.

Landon Donovan is in a good place right now. In more ways than one. Whether he goes home in March to rejoin the Los Angeles Galaxy, or stays on in England … it seems rather like a no-lose situation.