The Italian spoke about how his team needed more time if they were to match the likes of Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool.
While the Blues are in touching distance of the top teams, Maresca denied there was pressure to finish in the top four
He stated: "I already said that the club never mentioned to me about top four. Since I met the club for the first time, they always mentioned to me that the target, the idea, was to build something important for the next four or five years.
"For sure, we work every day to reach something important and we are going to try until the end to do our best. Pressure on the players? I don't think so, to be honest. If you go game by game, you can also see yourself and where you are at that moment and I think this can help a lot, because if you start to think about top four or top six, then you are already thinking about May or June and for me, that's too far and it's the same for the players.
"We are where we are. We are going to continue to try and improve things and then in the end, we will see."
He added: "No. I still feel the same (not ready). First of all, I think this team can improve many, many things. We can do many things better.
"We can defend better, we can attack better, we can manage the games better. The last 20 minutes against Newcastle, we didn't manage in the right way. This is also a learning process for these kind of things.
"We need to learn how to play different kind of games, teams with high pressing, teams that sit back. This is the reason why I said we are still far from those clubs."