It was an excellent showing from the Blues at Stamford Bridge, as we dominated an Aston Villa side which finished fourth in the Premier League last season throughout this fixture, taking an early lead through Nicolas Jackson before further strikes by Enzo Fernandez and Cole Palmer gave us the 3-0 margin of victory we deserved.

Maresca was understandably happy with another three points which puts us level with Arsenal in second place in the table, leaving him with a feeling of satisfaction which is only made stronger by the quality of our opponent.

'It was a very good performance, on the ball and off the ball,' said our head coach. 'I think we competed quite well. We have been doing that since we started, sometimes better sometimes worse, but as I have said many times I think we are going in the right direction.

'I said even after Leicester the game, no matter who the other team is it is important to play the way we want to play, on the ball and off the ball. When we do this and we get three points, for sure we are happy. But I think the performance was very good.

'On the ball we played the way we prepared the game, because Villa is a very difficult team. They are top defensively, it is very difficult to find space.

'They don’t press, they just wait, so you have to be patient, if you force it you lose the ball and you concede. Off the ball we were very aggressive, we were pressing.

'It was a very good game for many reasons. One of the reasons was because on the other side there was a team who is fantastic.

'I consider Emery a top manager, he has won trophies everywhere and he is doing fantastic at Villa. We were there, we prepared the game and we deserved to win.'

However, Maresca isn't allowing himself to get carried away by our league position or excellent performance today, making it clear he still believes his young squad needs to gather more big-match experience at the sharp end of top competitions before being able to go toe-to-toe with the title challengers.

'I think we are not ready to compete with Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City for many reasons. Because we won today I am not going to change my idea, we are not ready for that. But the good thing is we are improving and hopefully very soon we can be there.

'For sure we need to improve many things. We can attack better, we can defend better, but for me what we need is that you need to live moments to get better.

'These kind of players, some of them in their life, in their experience, they’ve played one final for any title. Probably last season in the Carabao Cup is the most important game they’ve played. You need to live moments to get better, and when we start to get those moments probably we get better and we can compete.

'Arsenal, Liverpool and City players, they have all lived finals and competed for titles. We are going to be there soon, but this is one of the reasons we are still far and not ready to compete with them now.'