SAM Allardyce will be back at Ewood Park screaming and shouting when Liverpool hit town today – but only into assistant Neil McDonald’s burning ear!

Rovers players welcomed back their manager at Brockhall yesterday after he spent two weeks recovering from a minor heart operation.

But they should be spared touchline tantrums from ‘Big Sam’ as he resumes his bitter rivalry with Rafa Benitez.

“Sam will be upstairs on his earpiece shouting and bawling in my ear as usual,” joked McDonald, who will continue in the dugout this afternoon.

“He’ll be downstairs before the game but let’s see how the game develops.

“If it goes really well then hopefully he sits upstairs. But he’s sitting next to the chairman so he might come down!

“The players are very comfortable that he’s sat upstairs. Whether he comes down before half-time remains to be seen, but we will do exactly what we have done in the past.”

After undergoing an angioplasty last Friday, few could argue with Allardyce if he preferred a more gentle comeback match than Liverpool.

But then, the Rovers boss is never more satisfied than confronting Reds boss Benitez in the heat of battle.

The last time the two managers met - in Rovers’ 4-0 Premier League defeat at Anfield in April - Allardyce’s blood boiled when the Spaniard appeared to contemptuously dismiss Blackburn’s chances with a touchline gesture once Liverpool were two goals clear.

At the time, Allardyce described Benitez’s actions as ‘disrespectful and humiliating’, while Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson lent his support to the Rovers boss.

McDonald accepts that Allardyce has a history of getting under the skin of ‘top-four’ managers, due partly to a run of successful results during his time at Bolton.

On Benitez’s ‘game over’ signal last season, the Blackburn number two said: “That’s got nothing to do with me. Let’s concentrate on the game.

“There’s a rivalry there, of course. There is with evey manager in the league because they all want to win. Each one works in a different way.”