It's amazing how people here think that it's not possible, when corruption was involved in pretty much every country at any different aspect of life, for centuries.
Especially because referees in England(and probably rest of the world too) are paid peanuts in comparision with players and everyone else involved in the game, as their wages are revealed every year, and yet they are the one who are generally under pressure every single week to perform, probably more than many players involved.
People here like to laugh at any suggestion of corruption, but it happened at pretty much every level of football, so even statistically it's realistic to think that at least one or two refs in history of Premierleague were bribed by some teams in the past 30 years. I mean, that's human nature of things, it's not some science fiction stuff.
I don't neccesarily think that they are bribed at this moment though(or they well could be, who knows?), but I am quite sure the owners of premierleague want spectacle in every game, so that's why we are seeing this random stuff every week.