Talking About Difficult Situations – Losing a war, a battle or a struggle?

After the project was cancelled we put a brave __________ on the situation, but we were all worried that we would lose our jobs.

Now that we’ve lost the contract, and our proposed new project has been rejected, it looks like we’re fighting a losing __________ and that we’ll probably end up being made redundant.

The team members didn’t seem to be cooperating well, but when it came to the __________ they came together and got excellent results.