I've watched Bristol City Ladies for the past three seasons and there's many signs of improvement there if one wants to look for them.
This season, the results have been disappointing but we are five games into the campaign and strange results haven't been confined to the women's game (see Man United v Spurs and Aston Villa v Liverpool). They've played the teams in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 7th so far.
While Chelsea thrashed them 9-0, they only lost 3-1 to Arsenal, the third goal on 86 minutes. Everton (managed by City Women's previous boss Willie Kirk) have improved big time this season and beat the City Women 4-0 while Man City on Saturday took full advantage of a side missing five players due to self isolating. The only game you can logically say they stood a hope of winning IMO was Birmingham and everything went wrong that could have that day. Palmer (the girl with the dislocated knee) was taken out by a poor tackle from Christie Murray who three minutes later, won and converted a penalty to make it 4-0. A bad day at the office admittedly but maybe it's best to judge City when they play more of the teams around them rather than Premier League sides that are given multiple times the money that City get.
Edited to add: The Man City game on Saturday afternoon came after they travelled up on the day, having not got back from the Crystal Palace away cup tie till nearly midnight on Thursday. No wonder they had no chance.