Chelsea put in a brilliant performance on home soil to dismiss Spanish champions Barcelona in style, on a brilliant Champions League night at Stamford Bridge.

Pedro Neto forced the visitors into an own goal to put us ahead and we raced clear in the second half, following a red card for Barcelona captain Ronald Araujo, as Estevao Willian fired an unstoppable shot into the roof of the net and Liam Delap completed the scoring with his first goal in the competition.

Our margin of victory could have been even larger, given Enzo Fernandez – twice – and Andrey Santos had goals disallowed, leaving Maresca understandably pleased with his team's work on Tuesday evening, and the form we are showing heading into Sunday's important Premier League fixture with Arsenal.

'For me personally it’s a big win, especially because the other team was Barcelona,' he explained. 'But nothing changes in terms of what team we are, what we can achieve. For sure tonight's win is important, but no more than that. It's over, it’s finished, now we focus on the next one which is difficult again.

'We need to keep the momentum because it’s very nice and it’s much easier to recover energy when you win games, for sure.'

It is not often that Barcelona find themselves second best in terms of possession, but that was exactly what happened at the Bridge on this occasion.

According to Maresca, that was a crucial piece of the game plan honed at Cobham in the last few days, designed to deny the visitors from playing their way and take them out of their comfort zone.

'Even when it was 11 against 11 I had a good feeling that we had a good level. Barcelona is comfortable when they have the ball, but otherwise they are not so comfortable. We had the ball. We concentrated on ball possession and also circulating the ball.

'For me to have a good formation and good positioning is fundamental. We spent 85 per cent of our training trying to work out how to be aggressive, how to attack our opponent, because as I said Barcelona is too comfortable when they have the ball. So we needed to take that ball away, always, and circulate it.

'And we tried to find opportunities. We scored three and then had three disallowed goals and many more opportunities, so I think we created enough to win the game.'

It was a fantastic atmosphere inside the Bridge as the Blues supporters roared their team on from start to finish. That was not lost on the Italian, who also revealed the message he gave his players in the changing room after the lengthy on-pitch celebrations with the fans had concluded.

'The feeling was very good, especially because it was at home with our fans,' our head coach added. 'It's always nice to share this kind of moment with them.

'But now, I told the players in the next 48 hours to completely switch off, have a rest, recover their energy, because here on Sunday we have Arsenal. My message after the game was just to recover energy, which in this moment is the most important thing, and then from Friday we start to think about Arsenal.'

Given the breathtaking performance Chelsea put in against Barcelona and the way the Bridge was bouncing, some of those supporters might need a rest before Sunday's game too.