Dropping items “in place” on Mountain Lion desktop

There is an option in path finder to hide finder's desktop and replace it with a version provided by path finder.

You might want to try reinstalling it and checking its preferences, particularly the general preferences section.

Having a bit of trouble following your description of the situation. It'd be helpful if you used actual path names instead of "The one in my user folder" type descriptions.

You have a backup right? Ok then...

The sidebar link is just a shortcut, so it doesn't really mean anything by itself. Fix that last. Just delete it and then re-add it.

Run a disk check and permission repair if you haven't already.

If ~/Desktop doesn't exist and you're sure it was some how renamed .tsclient, use terminal to move/rename it back. I think its more likely that your ftp client uses that as a temp location and that the files there are only partially downloaded though.

If ~/Desktop does exist then just move the folder contents back where they belong not the folder itself. Then delete and re-add to the sidebar