Like most beleaguered managers, he is finding that luck obstinately refuses to help him.
None of the players seems to believe a solution is possible and the Crown obstinately refuses to consider another election.
And the whole scheme looks like it will be scuppered when the young Louie (played by a girl or boy at alternate performances) obstinately refuses to be badgered.
No matter how satisfied Quebeckers are with Mr Bouchard and his government, support for secession obstinately refuses to go beyond 45% in the opinion polls, and sometimes dips much lower.
Although the Ukrainian elite might not quite want to become part of Russia, since it so obstinately refuses to become part of the West, we might as well let Moscow deal with the problem.
In the final session, 152 runs were added, more than England had acquired in the first two and left Cook contemplating how to win the game on a surface that obstinately refuses to deteriorate.
It spent only $7.3bn there, but seen no benefit as its Windows Phone business obstinately refuses to grow (it sold 8.4m phones in the past quarter) and increasingly loses money.
And he proves Shakespeare's gift for investing minor figures with super-abundant life by invoking "the briefly great figure of Barnadine" in Measure for Measure who obstinately refuses to be hanged.
If Gordon Brown obstinately refuses this compromise and forces his proposals through, could the last Labour party delegate leaving the Bournemouth conference hall turn off the lights please, they will be the lights of democracy.
To the mayor, who despite the mea culpa obstinately refuses to resign, it constituted a "coup d'état .The councillors might have gone further, demoting Mr Ford to the rank of councillor, were it not for his threat to take legal action.
Sophocles' heroine, who obstinately refuses to give up grieving for her father, Agamemnon, has obvious affinities with Hamlet – except that in her case, she has been festering with hatred through long years as little better than a slave at the court of her murderous, remarried mother.
