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Niels Nkounkou is set to extend his contract with Everton, before being sent out on loan to Championship side Cardiff City.

That’s according to L’Equipe, who provide details on the defender’s potential move to Wales today.

They report that Nkounkou, who returned to Everton this summer after a loan spell with Standard Liege in Belgium last year, is set to sign a contract extension at Goodison Park in the near future.

The 21-year-old, whose deal expires next summer, will sign an unspecified extension to his current deal on Merseyside, thus ruling out a free transfer next summer.

That will mean Everton avoid losing him on a free and allow them to sanction a loan deal, and a deal to send him to Cardiff is already in place.

They are seemingly keen on the Frenchman and Everton are happy to let him spend a year in the Championship as they want to ‘continue to develop the potential of the Frenchman’.

Whether that is because they see a future for him is unclear, but he is not a part of Frank Lampard’s plans this season, with Vitaly Mykolenko and Ruben Vinagre, a summer signing from Sporting Lisbon, already in the squad.

That’s left Nkounkou out of the picture and so the Toffees have instead decided to send him out on loan to Cardiff, once his new contract is in place.