The 2008–09 season is Derby County's 110th season in the Football League. It is their 41st season in the second division of English football and their first season in the second tier since the 2006–07 season. They were relegated from the Premiership in the 2007–08 season.

Despite relegation from the Premier League the previous season hopes had been high of an immediate return, especially after manager Paul Jewell's summer reconstruction of the squad seeing 16 players come in and 12 leave. However, things did not go to plan and the club spent the majority of the season in the lower reaches of the table. They were bottom of the league going into the August international break, after a 2-0 defeat away to Barnsley left the club with a single point from the first four games of the season. A 2-1 win over Sheffield United was the club's first league win in almost a year, bringing to an end of a 38-game winless sequence, and a run of just one defeat in 11, with 5 wins, lifted the club to the season high of 9th. Form soon dipped again and, after a run of just 2 wins in 11 matches which left the club 18th in the table, Jewell quit as manager on 28 December 2008 after just over a year in the job. He left with a record of just 13 wins in 58 matches, though he did take the club to their first major cup semi-final in over 30 years when the club reached the League Cup semi-final, where they lost 4-3 on aggregate to eventual winners Manchester United.

His eventual replacement was Nigel Clough, manager of local non-league club Burton Albion and son of the club's greatest ever manager Brian. Despite overseeing two defeats in his first two games, Clough soon turned the clubs form around, taking them to the 5th round of the FA Cup and just 3 defeats in 13 matches, a run which included 4 consecutive wins. A run of three consecutive defeats in mid April meant that survival wasn't guaranteed until the penultimate game of the season when Player of the Year Rob Hulse scored the winner in a 1-0 win over Charlton Athletic at Pride Park.

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