It's the penultimate day of our 2011-12 TEAMtalk Soccers ceremony, with Ian Watson presenting the Villain of the Season award.

While the past season has thrown up some of the most thrilling and memorable stories of recent years, villainy has remained a common theme throughout the campaign.

Your votes, though, offered few contenders but plenty of villainous acts carried out by a few recurring characters. Of all your suggestions, only really Mario Balotelli - more of a tiresome court jester than a villain - failed to make the final shortlist.

Villain of the Year - by Ian Watson:

5 - Craig Whyte:

'Lifelong supporter' Craig Whyte bought SPL champions Rangers for £1 in May 2011. Just a year later, the Gers found themselves penniless, potless, and on the brink of extinction.

Whyte took control at Ibrox on the back of a promise to invest £25million for transfers over a five-year period, but what he was not telling us is that he actually funded the purchase of his boyhood club by mortgaging future ticket revenues while tax bills remained unpaid.

With friends like these, who needs Celtic?

4 - Joey Barton

"Why do people always want to solve any conflict with a fight? As a pacifist I find it incredible." - Joey Barton, Twitter, 2012.

If he can find time between Googling Nietzsche quotes and Smiths lyrics, Barton would be well advised to search for a definition of 'pacifist' before taking a lengthy look in the mirror.

A man - changed or otherwise - opposed to war and violence is not likely to start three fights in less than a minute, which is exactly what the self-styled 'best midfielder England never had' attempted to do on the final day of the season, when the stakes really could not have been higher for both his current and former employers.

As it turned out, Barton's latest vision of red mist did not cost QPR their place in the Premier League, but it might eventually cost him his.

Barton received a 12-match ban for an elbow on Carlos Tevez, a knee into the back of Sergio Aguero and an attempted headbutt on Vincent Kompany at the Etihad Stadium and his paymasters, understandably, are reported to have had enough. After all, what use is a player who cannot play for almost a third of the season - especially one who pulls in over £70,000 a week and who is not nearly as good as he thinks he is?

And that's the problem now for Barton. If QPR find a way to dismiss him, no-one else is likely to take a punt on a player who has burnt almost every bridge he ever built.

3 - Luis Suarez:

As we all know, Luis Suarez was banned for eight games after being found guilty of using racist language towards Patrice Evra. Liverpool and Suarez claimed that this was a linguistic misunderstanding, which no-one disputed. That is not why Suarez finds himself in the final five for our Villain of the Year award.

The reason Suarez makes the shortlist is because of his refusal to shake the hand of Evra before Liverpool's Premier League game at Manchester United - Suarez's first away match after returning from his suspension.

Liverpool and Kenny Dalglish have since admitted they mishandled the whole sorry affair, but in fairness to the club and their former manager, the situation at Old Trafford was one entirely of Suarez's making. Indeed, managing director Ian Ayre said in the aftermath that Suarez was "wrong to mislead" the club, having indicated before the incident that he would shake Evra by the hand.

A handshake - sincere or not - should have brought an end to the saga but all Suarez succeeded in doing was to drag his name and that of his club's deeper into the mud. Liverpool, Dalglish and Suarez apologised 24 hours later but by then, the damage had been done.

2 - Venky's:

The Indian owners of Blackburn Rovers won our Failure of the Year award and no-one would have been surprised to see them walk away from the ceremony with a second gong, having wilfully stood back and allowed the club to plummet from an established Premier League side to a Championship-bound laughing stock.

The writing was on the wall from the very early stages of their stewardship at Ewood Park. Sacking a proven manager such as Sam Allardyce and replacing him with Steve Kean was naive at best, but offering their new man a pay rise as his team plummeted simply defied belief.

What Kean offers Venky's remains a mystery, but it is clearly more than he gives Rovers. Perhaps the owners are content to have in place a manager who sings from their songsheet and not one who will seek the resources needed to stop the club sinking into oblivion which, sadly, is where Rovers appear to be heading.

1 - Carlos Tevez:

The sight of Carlos Tevez looning it up with a Premier League winners medal around his neck stuck in the craw of a great number of fans, including many in blue who had taken the Argentine striker to their hearts since his arrival from United in 2009.

Regardless of the vulgarities of the deal that saw Tevez join City, his crossing of the Manchester divide gave the first signal that a shift in power in England's capital of football may be on the horizon. Tevez enjoyed two goal-laden seasons at the Etihad Stadium but his personal power struggle with Roberto Mancini was always going to come to a head.

And that it did last September on a bench in Munich when, with City trailing 2-0 to Bayern, Tevez defiantly refused to follow Mancini's instruction to warm-up. The seething manager said immediately after the game that his former skipper was 'finished' at City, but Mancini still had at least one olive branch thrown back in his face by Tevez, who promptly went on a three-month golfing holiday in Buenos Aires.

Tevez clearly thought his insolent behaviour would force City into getting rid of him, paving the way for a move and another huge payday for him and his entourage. To their credit, though, City refused to sell him on the cheap, with AC Milan unwilling to go within £6million of the Blues' valuation.

To his surprise, by February, the only club Tevez was swapping was his driver for a seven-iron, forcing him to finally make the offer of amends to Mancini and the City owners.

Tevez sulked back to Manchester and found his way back to fitness and the first team at a time when City and United were thrashing away at each other in the title race. After a couple of substitute appearances, he made his first start back in a City shirt against West Brom on April 11 - the same night he scored his first Premier League goal of the season. He followed that up with three more in a 6-1 win at Norwich as City set about clawing back an eight-point deficit in the title race; a marathon they eventually won in a photo finish at the line.

Despite what he and his puppet masters may tell you, there can be no doubt that City claimed their first title in 44 years in spite of Tevez, rather than because of anything he contributed before or after his six-month break.

An ugly Tevez-shaped shadow even hung over City's joyous celebrations, when the former United forward gleefully held aloft a placard with the words 'R.I.P. Fergie' scrawled in felt-tip onto the outline of a gravestone.

City were quick to react with an apologetic statement made on behalf of the champions and supposedly Tevez, who almost-immediately undermined his club's response by telling reporters in his homeland: "It seems like Ferguson is the president of England... I don't say sorry."

Tevez will no doubt be hoping he never has to return to England after the summer transfer window. The feeling, though, Carlos is most definitely mutual.