As 67th birthday presents go, Arsene Wenger deserved something more elevated than this. Instead of eight successive victories, however, his high-flying Arsenal side found themselves banging their heads against a brick wall of Middlesbrough resistance.
Indeed, were it not for Laurent Koscielny's superb late sliding tackle stealing the ball from Alvaro Negredo as he shaped to be the most obdurate of party poopers, Aitor Karanka's struggling team might have emerged with all three points.
"To make Petr Cech the best player of Arsenal shows we played really well," said the visiting manager. It was hard to argue with his assessment.
With hindsight, the problem for Arsenal was clear in the team sheet: there was no Santi Cazorla. The Spaniard had been on the receiving end of a kick on the Achilles on Wednesday, injury being the return for inflicting Champions League insult on Ludogorets. As it was in the second half of last season,
Cazorla's importance was horribly clear in his absence. Arsenal had a gaping hole where his subtlety, his shrewd forward prompting, his astute use of angles normally reside.
"We lacked a bit of creativity today," admitted Wenger. "Of course you miss always Cazorla, from deep midfield into the final third his passes are always quick, always accurate."
Sure, even without the Spaniard's promptings, there was plenty of initial bluster. Arsenal started as if anxious to harry their opponents back up the A1. Within the first few minutes a free kick from Mesut Ozil was blasted over the bar, while a fierce long ranger from Mohamed Elneny from Alex Iwobi's deft lay-off was hit just wide. Then Theo Walcott, played through by Francis Coquelin, squared to Ozil, who went down under what appeared to be the lightest of touches from a Middlesbrough defender. Never slow to demonstrate his thinking, Mike Dean gesticulated extravagantly that he was not interested in awarding a penalty.
For much of the first half, it was hard to know if Karanka's team were camped in their own half through intention or obligation; a heat map of possession would have indicated scorched earth in the Boro sections. But while Ludogorets on Wednesday night offered all the soggy bottomed resistance of Bake Off disaster, Middlesbrough were carved from north eastern granite, the superb Ben Gibson in particular giving vivid demonstration why he is being touted as a future England player.
The longer it went on, the more often Walcott found the ball slipping from his feet as he pressed forward, the more Iwobi's promptings hit a foresquare blue wall of the Boro backline, the more Ozil fell over in the vain attempt to win free kicks, so the pre-match assumptions of an Arsenal walkover began to look premature. Especially when, on 19 minutes Adama Traore, a jet-heeled counter-attacking threat throughout, burst through on a misplaced square ball. Getting in behind Koscielny, he stepped inside
Shkodran Mustafi, obliging Cech to come tearing off his line. The keeper's sharp save fell to Negredo.
With the net gaping, the Spaniard contrived to pick out Cech again. As the ball broke free once more, Boro were awarded a free kick. Gaston Ramirez curled it past the wall on to the post, and the ball bounced away to safety.
Arsenal began the second half with an urgency which suggested Wenger had sent his birthday cake flying across the dressing room. And there was almost immediate reward. From an Ozil free kick, Victor Valdes flapped, the ball landing at Alexis Sanchez's feet. He played the ball behind the keeper across a gaping goal but fractionally too high for Koscielny. Moments later, Hector Bellerin crossed and the ball seemed to be heading for Iwobi's feet, but a perfectly timed interception by Gibson protected Boro's hopes.
But the longer Arsenal failed to convert such supremacy, danger always lurked. Bellerin had to scramble away an Antonio Barragan cross destined to be a tap-in for Marten de Roon. Traore then applied the afterburners, roaring forward on the break to unleash a crisp shot which Cech saved well.
In an effort to prise open the stoutest of defences, Wenger loaded his forward line, bringing on first Lucas Perez, then Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. As the jitters rose in the stands, Arsenal's radar seemed to be on the blink. Sanchez and Ozil both sent crosses way too close to Valdes, Walcott padded a header into the keeper's arms. And when, at the death, the crowd thought Ozil had brought last second redemption when he skipped on to Oxlade-Chamberlain's through ball to scoop the ball past Valdes, the linesman legitimately indicated he was well offside.
"I have a frustrated face and I am," admitted Wenger. "We had a lot of the ball, but a lot of the ball in the modern game is not enough. In the end we may not have won it but at least we were intelligent enough not to lose it."
Left clutching for consolation: no, it was not the best of birthdays for the great man.